[OPE-L:3553] Marxian empirical research revisited

Gerald Lev (glevy@pratt.edu)
Tue, 29 Oct 1996 07:55:03 -0800 (PST)

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Paul C wrote in [OPE-L:3551]:

> I had, prior to last year tended to treat variable capital in the
> conventional way when processing national accounts. I would express
> profit rates as
> p/(K+v)
> with v being the annual wage bill. The error of my ways were pointed out by
> Maniattis in his article in Capital and Class earlier this year. I now
> accept the argument that one should not include v when computing the
> rate of profit using national accounts. If anything one should express
> it as
> p
> --------
> (K - tv/2)
> where t is the average payment period of wages as a fraction of a year,
> and v is the rate of wages paid per year. This gives us a consistent stock
> quantity to divide by and, moreover, allows for the fact that employees
> advance their labour to capital rather than vice-versa.

How has the recognition of the "error of [your] ways" affected the results
of the Cockshott/Cottrell/Michaelson empirical work? That is, have you
recalculated using the above understanding and has there been a
significant change in the conclusions re "Testing Marx"?

In Solidarity,

Jerry

PS: do you think you could do something about *not* including all of that
extraneous funny [unencoded] stuff at the end of your posts?