A reply to Jerry's ope-l 3608.
There are three errors in Laibman's formulation, IMO.
First, what he calls the OCC is actually the VCC. Marx's OCC is a value
measure of the TCC; changes in values alone do not affect it. (CC =
composition of capital, O = organic, V = value, T = technical.) This has
been amply discussed by Fine, Saad-Filho, and others.
Second, in Marx's VCC, the denominator is variable capital, not the
value-product that is in Laibman's denominator. How can surplus-value be part
of capital?
Third, Laibman is valuing means of production by using the vertically
integrated labor coefficients of the two-system simultaneist intepretation.
To be representing Marx's 0CC, he should instead be using constant prices
(measured in labor-time or constant MEV money); to measure the VCC, he should
be valuing each increment of the stock at the prices that prevailed when it
was acquired, not at the post-production prices of the current period, *if* he
is measuing the value composition of the capital *advanced*.
For these reasons, the OCC, and even the VCC, is not equivalent to Laibman's
K/Y. So the rest of his conclusions, though correct, do not imply what he
wishes them to imply.
Andrew Kliman