From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Mon Mar 19 2007 - 03:37:05 EDT
>On Sat, 17 Mar 2007, Pen-L Fred Moseley wrote: > >>M is whatever it is in the real capitalist economy. With >>unlimited resources, one could estimate M. But this is not >>necessary for the theory. M is an actual magnitude, which >>exists prior to the production of the output, and which can be >>taken as given as such, whatever it is. > >I think Paul has a good point in his critique of the "given-ness" >of M. Duncan Foley has made a related point, which pertains to >Fred's claim that M (whatever it is) "exists prior to the >production of the output". > >That is, a stash of "money to be advanced" can be said to exist >_prior_ to production only (a) at the micro level of individual >firms (perhaps!) or (b) in a fictional economy on a synchronized >annual agricultural cycle. In real capitalist economies >production cycles are of various time spans and are intertwined. >There's no macroeconomic time "prior to production" at which one >could count up M. (What we can count: stocks at a point in time, >anf flows over a definite period of time). Of course this has all been previously discussed, and I'll assume that there exists a traditional transformation procedure--that is put aside my inverse transformation interpretation. For Marx the cost prices are expressed, well, in prices, so that implies there already exists before the transformation a MEL determined by productivity in the gold sector. Now let's say the cost prices are determined on the assumption that prices are proportional to values and we have the famous transformation of simple prices into prices of production. I see no reason to believe that the exchange value of gold will be affected by the equalization of the profit rates, though that will probably affect the distribution between rent and profit in the gold sector (nor should the exchange value of gold be affected by changes in the ratio of profits to wages). In other words, the exchange value of of gold in invariant to the redistribution of profit among the sectors in which reproducible commodities are produced and thus total simple price should remain equal to total price of production. The size of the pie as measured in gold should not change as capitalists share the total surplus value among themselves. Of course you may object that total profit will no longer equal surplus value even if this iterative process does not reach equilibrium but as Shaikh and Gouverneur argue this is only an optical illusion. Of course there was with money gold commodity a real problem of fetishism, that is it appeared that there was too much gold or too little gold chasing commodities. Which is the only an expression of disproportionalities in the social relations of labor, that is productivity growth in the gold sector was racing ahead or falling behind average productivity growth. Because Marx wants to study the effects on the relations of production of the development of the forces of production of truly reproducible commodities, the kind of commodity with which he begins his investigation, he assumes throughout capital that the value of gold is fixed and that its exchange value is determined by that value, as Fred has argued. This is a perfectly reasonable scientific procedure. It also leads to more fertile results than the construction of an unnecessary and purely analytical standard commodity. Which seems to have solved a problem that Ricardo wrongly thought important, that is, distributional changes would affect the exchange value of gold. Ricardo simply forgot that gold does not come under the laws of reproducible commodities. I have argued this at length on this list with quotes from Ricardo; his own confusion is evident in these contradictory passages. Rakesh > >Ian made the point that sums of money have a real existence, >whether as stashes of coin or as bit patterns on bank computer >hard drives (I paraphrase). That's true, but Paul's point is that >it's not at all clear which of these real money-tokens should be >added up to give Fred's "M". > >Allin Cottrell
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