From: Simon Mohun (s.mohun@qmul.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Nov 06 2002 - 17:18:32 EST
Jerry, Thanks for this. I'll think it over. Simon At 16:50 06/11/02 -0500, you wrote: >Re Simon's [7930]: > >Comments without brackets below are more directly responsive >to what you have written. > > > Let's suppose the TCC is the ratio of total means of production >(MP) to the total workers who work with them, expressed in >use-value terms. < > >OK. > > > If we wish to measure this, > >I agree that there is a problem in measuring the TCC [and believe that, >going back to the discussions by Fine and others in the 1970's, it was >the desire to "operationalize" Marxian categories and make them more >capable of being measured empirically that lead to some re-conceptions >of the compositions of capital.] > > > then the denominator is unproblematically the hours > > expended on working with these MP. > >[a. Is that unproblematic? Well, of course hours can be counted but >socially-necessary labor hours is a harder concept to operationalize.] > >[b. the total quantity of workers working with MP can remain the >same even though the hours expended on working with those MP >might change as with a shortening or lengthening in the workday or >workweek. Consequently one measure -- quantity of workers -- is >not interchangeable with the other measure -- labor hours expended.] > > > The numerator is a difficulty. Either it > > is a vector, in which case the TCC is a vector divided by a scalar, which > > is hard to make sense of. > >Agreed. > > > Or it is a scalar too, an aggregate of the MP. To > > aggregate heterogeneous MP into a scalar requires weights. What choice is > > there other than constant price weights? > >I agree that there is an aggregation problem here. > > > Then we need to express the TCC in value terms. > >Herein lies the rub. If that is the case then why have the distinction >between TCC and VCC to begin with? > > > But this is problematic > > because both quantities and prices are changing. > >Agreed. > > > Accumulation typically > > proceeds via labour-saving MP-using innovations which raise labour > > productivity and s/v. These are processes in production. But for a rise in > > s/v to be realised, prices must change (for that is how the war of > > competition is fought). This happens in circulation. Hence two things are > > going on. Capital intensity is rising in production. And prices (including > > wages) are changing. > > The OCC abstracts from the changes in prices. Hence it is measured at > > constant prices, and its movement must mirror the TCC. It measures the > > value of a change in quantities. > > The VCC takes into account the changing values too. Hence it is a current > > price measure. > > (Digression: actually this is exactly the issue that made so much > > discussion in the Cambridge-Cambridge capital controversies so dreadful. A > > inability to distinguish between the value of a change in something and a > > change in the value of something just led to muddle.) > > I don't know whether I agree or disagree with your interpretation. But do > > you have a problem with any of the above? > >--------------------------------------------------------------------- > >Well, I agree that it is a perspective which has some practical advantages >re operationalizing Marxian categories. It may be that the perspective that >you have advanced is an advance beyond what Marx wrote: i.e. an >improvement to Marx's theory. Yet, I'm not at all convinced that this was >Marx's theory *and* I have reservations (described below) about its overall >usefulness. > >We agree that, as presented by Marx, the TCC is expressed in terms of >use-value. I would go further and claim that the distinction between >the TCC and the VCC is a more concrete manifestation of the contradictory >relation between use-value and value. It is because the OCC, by my reading >of >Marx, encompasses both of these aspects of the value dialectic that I >referred to it previously as a dialectical unity of the TCC and the VCC. > >Given the role that this thread -- i.e. the interplay between use-value and >value -- plays in the whole of Marx's theory, I am very leery of abandoning >Marx's conception of the TCC which I believe your perspective does since >it re-casts what was a use-value relation as a value relation. With your >reformulation we now have a way of measuring the TCC but we no longer >have the opposition between use-value and value. > >It is of course true that the TCC -- and use-value in general -- can not >as Marx defined it be objectively, independently, unambiguously, and >unprobmatically measured. I think that Marx thought an increase in the >TCC was self-evident, i.e. it was viewed as an indisputable historical >tendency. Indeed, from the standpoint of the mid 19th Century the >growth in the mass of machinery to workers employed could be viewed >as being as self-evident as the fact that wealth in capitalist social >formations appears as an "immense collection of commodities". > >Marx also believed that use-value could not be measured -- yet does >that mean that we should conclude that since it can't be accurately >measured it must be modified so that it becomes value rather than >opposition to value? I think not. > >What I will have to think through more are the *implications* of your >redefinition of the TCC and the OCC for the rest of Marx's theory, >especially for interpreting Part Three of Volume 3 of _Capital_. > >The above also constitutes a reply to today's posts by Andy. > >In solidarity, Jerry Centre for Business Management, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK Tel: +44-(0)20-7882-5089 (direct); +44-(0)20-7882-3167 (Dept. Office) Fax: +44-(0)20-7882-3615
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