>Shane writes in response to Justin: > >>A monopolist is able to get an above-average rate of return on its capital. >>Nonmonopolists (except, perhaps, in Lake Woebegone..) must therefore >>receive a below-average return on their capital. > >This does not necessarily follow. Suppose, for example, that capitalists >enjoy "monopoly" (more accurately, "monopsony") wage-setting power in >markets for labor power due to the empirically relevant fact that workers >face significant costs of job search (this is a typical feature of search >models; see for example the survey article on monopsony in labor markets by >Boal and Ransom in the J. of Econ Lit, 1997). Then more monopsony power, >and thus more surplus value, for one capitalist does not imply less for any >other capitalist. Rather it implies that workers as a class perform more >surplus labor....
No. If one capitalist holds monopsony power over a significant group of workers it follows that the other capitalists, dealing with a smaller labor-power market, will have to pay "above-average" wages and thus settle for below-average profits. > >>The economic process >>determining these different returns to different capitals is a process of >>distributing the value of the total surplus product among the various >>claimants to that surplus value. Marx's "Law Of Value" applies to the >>aggregate surplus as produced. Because Marx defined "value" as >>a determinate quantity of labor time and "capital" as *capitalized* >>surplus value he was able to view the capitalist system as a dynamic >>entity subject to quantitatively determined "laws of motion" such >>as the "Law of the Falling Tendency of the Rate of Profit" which >>has been shown both to be empirically true and to be a strict >>consequence of the fundamental social relationships defining a >>capitalist economic system. > >For what it's worth, I'd say the empirical relevance of this "law" remains >an open question, as does the sense in which it is a "strict conseqeuence >of the fundamental social relationships defining a capitalist system." If I failed to prove both points in my 1963 dissertation, please enlighten me on any defective points in my argument. Shane Mage "Thunderbolt steers all things." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64
