On Tue, 01 Mar 1994 20:07:27 -0500 (EST) Gil said:
>
>Such considerations, by the way, are by no means foreign to a dynamic
>GE model, so I'm hard pressed to see how this is a special point for
>the Sraffian approach.
"Dynamic GE model" seems an oxymoron, at least if one interprets
dynamics as involving historical time, fundamental uncertainty,
hysteresis and the like.
>
> This is methodologically unacceptable, an attempt to have one's cake
>and eat it, too. To Marx, labor power is a commodity, just like the
>production inputs in Sraffa's system are commodities. So how can one
>justify the dichotomy that the price of labor power is mysteriously
>the product of "social forces", utterly independent of labor markets,
>while for the other commodities, "the role of the MARKET is ...to
>assign prices ...."? Why isn't the price of coal, of bread, of
>spinning jennies, of cotton gins, ad infinitum, determined by "social
>and historical forces", outside the Sraffian model? On what grounds
>can the Sraffian system pretend that the latter commodity prices are
>market-determined entities while the price of that special commodity,
>labor power, is not? ...
In his long-winded and hard-to-read way, old Karlos argued that
capitalist *treated* labor-power as a commodity but that in reality
it was not so. Or if you wish to avoid quibbles about terminology,
labor-power is a commodity unlike all others. Because labor-power
is a property of human beings, which are quite different from
coal, bread, spinning jennies, etc. (or at least they were last
time I checked). Capitalism tries to treat people like coal, etc.,
but people rebel against such treatment. This leads to all sorts
of conflict which implies the development of all sorts of institutions
and social norms which cannot be explained in market terms. Some of
this is picked up in the principal/agent problem literature (though
of course they reduce it to a single dimension).
BTW, I see the development of the asymmetric info literature
(principal/agent and adverse selection, etc.) as a positive
move. Perhaps it's the first step of a 12-step process of breaking
the Walrasian habit. Too bad that people have a hard time with
the other 11.
>[NOTE TO MIKE LEBOWITZ, JIM DEVINE, ET AL.--I'M NOT RESTARTING THE
>FIGHT OVER ROEMER HERE, GUYS! IT'S AN IF-THEN ARGUMENT! THAT'S ALL!
>HONEST!]
>
what's wrong with a fight, as long as it's polite?
in pen-l solidarity,
Jim Devine BITNET: jndf@lmuacad INTERNET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ., Los Angeles, CA 90045-2699 USA
310/338-2948 (off); 310/202-6546 (hm); FAX: 310/338-1950
