Subject: [OPE-L:1658] Re: Determination of Value Transferred
From: John Ernst (ernst@pipeline.com)
Date: Wed Nov 10 1999 - 04:14:00 EST
Hi Fred,
In your post commenting on Andrew's stuff, you wrote:
"According to my interpretation, prices of production are NOT
determined simultaneously with input prices (in the Sraffian way, with the
physical inputs and outputs as the initial givens), but are instead
determined in the way I have just described, WITH CONSTANT CAPITAL TAKEN
AS GIVEN, and with the precise magnitude of the given constant capital
depending on current reproduction costs."
Please note that in order to take the constant capital as given you have
to know what the costs of reproduction are. Thus, valuation of the
given amount of constant capital can only take place after reproduction
takes place. There is no difference between unit input prices and unit output
prices. We are stuck in one period of production if not at a point in time
since to determine input prices at the beginning of the period we must
already
know the output prices at the end of the period.
Your input prices in no way tell us anything about the prices actually
paid for the inputs. Analyses that use the concept of value in tracking
the capitalist process of reproduction from one period to the next become
impossible. The point of expressing the capital advanced in terms of value
is lost. Hence, I fail to see how this differs from the Sraffian manner of
determining prices of production; indeed, your relative prices are the same
ones that any Sraffian would derive.
John
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