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From: owner-ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu on behalf of Gerald Levy
Sent: Monday, March 16, 1998 3:45 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list
Subject: [OPE-L] Re: Historical, real and current costs
Jerry writes: "Since no direct or indirect labour is being performed on the
widgets after 5 p.m, you are asserting that the additional value created after
working time was created by *nature* (the Sun in particular)."
See how easy it is to find someone guilty of internal inconsistency? You have
the makings of a great economist!
Actually, I'm saying no such thing, but this is how Bailey and others saw the
problem (wine fermentation). Actually the Ricardians did as well, but they
tried to evade it by verbal subterfuge.
I *am* saying, however, that value does not increase in strict proportion to
the flow of labor-time; i.e., the flow of value per unit of time is not
proportional to the flow of labor per unit of time.
Jerry: "Didn't Marx discuss this situation with reference to wine?"
Yes. As I noted in my post of Sunday, March 15, 1998 12:56 AM, "We have here
a variant of the famous problem of wine fermenting in casks, which led to the
disintegration of the Ricardian school." Marx discussed the problem in that
section of the TSV, Part III, in his commentaries on John Mill and MacCulloch.
He also refers to it briefly in _Capital_ II, in the chapter on Production
Time (I think), in connection with the difference between working time and
production time.
Jerry: "However, in Marx's discussion, living labourer was required during
the period when the product is stored."
Marx's point was that the value of finished wine is greater than that of the
pressed grapes, even WITHOUT additional labor being expended.
Andrew Kliman