Subject: [OPE-L:1690] Re: determination of value transferred
From: Gerald Levy (glevy@pratt.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 16 1999 - 11:51:11 EST
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 15:31:32 +0000
From: Paul Cockshott <wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
At 10:21 15/11/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Re Paul C's [OPE-L:1673]:
>
> > You [i.e. Andrew K, JL] seem to imply that if an theoretical
> > investigation shows that Marx
> > might have made a mistake, this is a-priori a reason for rejecting it.
> > Surely if Sraffa's analysis shows that changes of conditions in luxury
> > industries do not affect the general rate of profit whereas Marx's assumes
> > that they do, we have to find some criterion external to these assertions
> > to judge which is right.
>
>What "external" criterion would you propose? Looking at empirical data
>won't help us much since we would have no way of determining whether the
>changes in conditions in the "luxury" industries cause the changes in the
>average rate of profit or whether the changes in the average rate of
>profit are attributable to other variables, including what is happening in
>the non-luxury industries.
I dont propose to try doing the work myself, but I think it is well within
the scope of a PhD student.
One might approach it by constructing a sufficiently large set of observations
at different time periods and in different countries to see if by including
changes in the conditions
of production in the luxury goods industries ( including for example
armaments )
one was able to predict changes in the rate of profit better than if one
ignored
these.
One would have to concentrate on flow rates of profit as these are what the
standard Sraffian model and Marx's standard model deal with.
>
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