[OPE-L:3225] Re: IVA and all that

andrew kliman (Andrew_Kliman@msn.com)
Wed, 2 Oct 1996 07:51:00 -0700 (PDT)

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In reply to Steve Keeen's ope-l 3210:

Marx did distinguish between workers' consumption and capitalists' consumption
in the reproduction schema. But that was a distinction *within* Dept. II, IIa
and Iib. The *primary* division was thus left unsullied by this elaboration,
the division between means of production and articles of consumption.
Tugan-Baranovskii, whom we have to thank for a lot of other original stuff as
well, originated the 3-Dept. scheme.

Steve: "It takes 2 sectors to develop the critique of simultaneous valuation,
which is why I don't see that a one-sector TSS is significant."

Huh? Why does it take 2 sectors?

Steve: "On your initial point that you are using 'prices' to mean 'the
monetary
expression of value', is this intended to show that Marx's non-transformation
of input-values into prices of production in III/9 was a valid exercise?"

No, not really. There are two key meanings to the price/value distinction in
Marx's work. A "qualitative" one-money price is the external measure of a
commodity's value---and a quantitative one---the amount of value received by a
sector for its output (e.g., its production price or market price) differs
from the amount of value it has produced. I think this was generally
understood in the pre-Seton era. For instance, Bortkiewicz understood well
that Marx's values and prices in Ch. 9 were *both* money sums. He claimed to
have proved that Marx's account gave the wrong quantitative magnitudes because
Marx did not simultaneously value inputs and outputs.

Andrew Kliman