On Bruce's [OPE-L:3473]:
(snip)
>[Alan attributes to Duncan a monetary expression of value of $26/16 hours.
>Duncan hasn't commented on this, or if he has I've missed it, but I suspect
>he would similarly disavow this ratio as expressing his own view.]
I'm also backlogged on working through Alan and Andrew's recent detailed
posts, but I have them on my stack.
(snip)
>To put the question as plainly as possible: if profit really is simply the
>monetary expression of the unpaid labor of workers, then shouldn't there be
>some common scale in which both labor-time and price accounting can be done
>such that total profit *equals* total surplus value? If there is one
>consistent with Alan's argument, then I don't see it. I have my own ideas
>about what is going on here (I can do the same sort of labor-time
>accounting on Alan's money magnitudes that I offered earlier in response to
>Andrew's), but I'd like to better comprehend Alan's thinking before jumping
>to conclusions.
I'm very sympathetic to this way of putting the problem. I discussed this
question in some detail in my 1982 RRPE paper on the transformation
problem, and in Understanding Capital. The "New Interpretation" amounts
mathematically to the axioms that there is such a common scale, and that it
preserves both the value of the net product and of surplus value. This
suggests that any other approach will either have to be consistent with the
"New Interpretation", or will in some cases fail to conserve either the
value of net product or surplus value. I want to look over Alan's and
Andrew's ideas carefully from this point of view.
Duncan
Duncan K. Foley
Department of Economics
Barnard College
New York, NY 10027
(212)-854-3790
fax: (212)-854-8947
e-mail: dkf2@columbia.edu