On Dec 27, 2011, at 10:49 PM, Doug Henwood wrote: > > On Dec 27, 2011, at 10:42 PM, Shane Mage wrote: > >> For Marx, capital is to be evaluated as a quantity of labor time. >> Simple and precise. > > Measured how? Hours? Hours of SNALT? Money? If money, which currency?
The Gross Income (equal to Gross Product) generated in a capitalist economic system is definitionally equal to V (after-tax wages of productive workers) plus C (incomes of unproductive workers+physical capital value consumed+inventory change) plus S (after-tax property incomes from profit, rent, interest, and executive salaries) aggregated over the given economic system during the accounting period, expressed in that system's monetary units of account. The Net Income (equal to Net Product) is V plus S. SNALT (socially necessary average labor time) consists of the sum of the time-units of productive labor performed during that period in that system. The labor-time represented by each monetary unit (L) is therefore defined as V+C+S divided by SNALT. The Capital Stock of the economy is changed in each period by the net investment (I), which consists of the portion of S not consumed by the propertied classes. The change in capital stock expressed as units of SNALT is thus (I)(L), and the capital stock at the start of each period is (I)(L) summed up over all previous periods. > Hardly simple or precise. *Conceptually* (and we are talking purely conceptually) it is simple and precise. In terms of practical measurement, of course, it is neither simple nor precise. But that, after all, is always the difference between theory and practice. Shane Mage "All things are an equal exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods are for gold and gold for goods." Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr, 90 _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
