Hi Rieu:
I am also happy to hear from you on OPE-L. Hope Andrew
gives you a botton. As you know, I think that if we
disagree, it does not really matter. Our common aim -- I
think -- is to try to understand Marx.
Frankly, I need more explanaition about your statement:
> Like Jerry, I think that the future must affect the
> present. Real dynamics might be a dialectical synthesis of
> past and future...
Perhaps if we move around the phenomemical (an necessary)
world of money and prices I could find some meaning to your
words. (I am thinking in the formation of prices by means of
"expectations" and this kind of things.)
But if we analyse the substance of value, labor-time, it is
difficult for me to understand. If in 1996 it was necessary
100 hours to produce 1 Kilo of coffee, and in 1997 this is
reduced to 90 hours, I cannot see how the labor spent in
1996 (which is the REAL and IRREVERSIBLE SOCIAL cost of
coffee in that year) can be retroactively modified,
reduced.
Physically speaking I cannot modified my past actions.
Today in the morning I posted a message to comment Chai-on
questions about the words "devaluation" and "appreciation".
My present actions (for example, this post) cannot modified
my past act. I cannot "erase" that post; morever, I cannot
recover the "energy" I spent writing it. There is no
"dialectics" that can achieve this.
I find your phrase "dialectical synthesis of past and
future" very obscure. In Spanish we have a very good
argentinian writer called Jorge Luis Borges who loved the
paradoxes with time. I enjoy them very much his stories,
but they do not contribute to my understanding of social
phenomena. What do you mean for "dialectical synthesis of
past and future"?
Besides this I have another perplexity. Let us suppose that
we interpret Marx's text in the line you are suggesting (in
the line I am imagining you are suggesting). In that case
we will fall in the so-called Okishio Theorem, and one
Marx's proposition seems to be "false". However, if we
follow the other interpretation, we can formalize Marx's
proposition. Why should I choose the (discussable)
framework in which is not coherent with Marx's
propositions? Note that this does not imply that Marx is
right interpreting the laws of capitalism. Perhaps Marx --
and his formalization are wrong. But in terms to obtain a
more exahustive and rigorous formulation of his theory, I
will choose the framework which is able to replicate more
Marx's statements.
It is the same story as with the "transformation problem".
Why I should use a dualistic framework, if I cannot
reproduce some Marx's fundamental statements concerning the
relation between price of production and value?
> By the way, I think that the numerical example presented by Andrew is
> too simple to be a material for discussing the equalization of the rate
> of profit.
I think so.
Alejandro Ramos M.
29.1.96