In reply to:
----------
From: Fred Moseley[SMTP:fmoseley@laneta.apc.org]
Sent: 18 November 1996 06:57
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [OPE-L:3680] cost price and value
Fred argues that :
the initial givens both in Marx's theory of surplus-value and
in his theory of prices of production is the sum of money capital consumed
in the production of commodities (or the initial M in the circulation of
capital: M - C - M', where M = C + V). The main question of Marx's theory
of surplus-value is how this GIVEN sum of money capital increases it
magnitude, or becomes more money. In other words, how do capitalists
withdraw more money from circulation than they throw into circulation, with
the initial money capital thrown into circulation taken as given.
Paul Cockshott replies:
There are two classes of answer that can be given to this,
an answer at the monetary level, and an answer at the level
of the social division of labour.
Marx poses the question at a monetary level, and answers it
at the level of the social division of labour ( division of
the social working day into necessary and surplus time ). He
does this by establishing, or at least asserting, a correlation
between monetary magnitudes and quantities of social labour time.
Having done that, it is possible to prove things about monetary
phenomena by analysing the social division of labour.
It is possible to produce an answer to the question at the
purely monetary level, which was the essential achievement of
Kalecki in the 30s. In the terms of this explanation it is the
expenditure of capitalists on investment and consumption that
explains how they as a class can appropriate profits.
His equations were along the lines
Net sales = wages + profits
Net purchases = workers consumption + capitalist consumption + net investment
Since all sales must be purchases, we have
wages + = workers consumption +
profits capitalist consumption +
net investment
If we assume that workers consumption = wages, then we have it that
profits = capitalist consumption + net investment
Thus the answer to the question of how capitalists are able to withdraw
profits from circulation at a monetary level is that they
throw the same amount into circulation in the form of consumption
and investment.
Kalecki's theory, just as much as Marx's is an instance of political
economy from the proletarian class standpoint. In Kalecki's account
emphasis is placed on the collective monopoly of the means of production
by the capitalist class which means that every zloty they spend comes
right back to them, whereas every zloty the workers spend ends up
in the hands of the capitalists.
Both Kalecki's account and Marx's are valid, and thus must both in
some sense be simultaneously true. Of the participants on this list the
one who seems to have done the most to try and integrate the monetary
account of profit with the social division of labour account is
Riccardo Bellafiore.
I tend to think that considerably more progress would be made
towards answering some of the politically important issues raised
by Gerry if we paid more attention to what Riccardo has been doing
and spent less time discussing differing interpretations of value
theory.
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