Re: [PEN-L] power and prices

[soula avramidis]

Yes with respect to the first part. However, I would have thought that the question of value transfers and depreciation is a measurement question that can be adjusted under more experimental like conditions to approximate the facts.

 

As to prices causing crisis, the answer is no. Socialist society would redistribute the surplus at the point of production, or ex-post, at least to maintain, in the transitional case, equality of living conditions before equality of opportunity. In class society, final commodity prices move in relation to the rapport de force within a nation and across nations, e.g. exchange rate determination and tradable commodity prices.  Prices are an indicator or symptom not the cause of crises.  The power to manipulate and control the surplus cum prices/profits to the interests of capital rests in the control of capital over labor and, the process of intercapitalis rivalry across the various sections of capital. The composition of classes and acuteness of class divisions, i.e. class structure that treats wages as a residual, is the principal cause, that is exploitation.

"Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

right. Am I correct to say that if the working class ruled commodity producing society, values would be used to allocate resources, but under capitalism, prices are used instead? Since values measure social cost (cost to society), the use of prices leads to crises and the like.

Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine

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From: PEN-L list on behalf of soula avramidis
Sent: Fri 1/14/2005 12:27 AM
To: PEN-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] power


It may be that power is the majority consensus that the bourgeoisie creates via its ideology which then deems necessary the allocation of resources on the basis of profits rather than socially accountable or working class based values. in a sense power is the power of ideology or that which makes the unnecessary for the majority and necessary for the few, necessary for all.. I am saying that socially necessary labor is fundamentally distorted by the class system under capitalism and it is this law that allocates resources.

"Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:

I haven't had enough time to participate in -- or even read -- the
discussion with Jonathan Nitzan. So I've probably missed something.

But I think that the word "power" is one of those words that usually
requires some second word to clarify its meaning, as in "market power"
or "political power." Otherwise the concept seems pretty vacuous.

It also has the problem that the concept of "utility" has in
neoclassical economics. You can't figure out what gives an individual
utility -- or rather, what they kind of utility they expect to get, _ex
ante_ -- except through revealed preference _ex post_, which means that
the theory doesn't actually provide any additional information to our
understanding of the world (e.g., make a prediction) while assuming that
_ex post_ and _ex ante_ are identical. Similarly, you can't tell who or
what has more power except when it's used.

On the other hand, capital can be quantified in a commodity-producing
society (like capitalism). For simplicity, consider only fixed means of
production ("capital goods"). You simply add up the different units of
heterogeneous capital goods using their prices. You could also use "base
year" prices to get an index number of "real capital goods." This
doesn't mean that you can derive a neoclassical-style theory of
distribution, aggregate production, and growth that involves "capital,"
but it does mean that capital can be measured and used in social
accounting (such as calculating an estimate of the profit rate). What
makes it possible is the existence of a commodity-producing society --
and thus of prices. (Of course, such measures only apply by the
standards of the commodity-producing society itself. Capital goods'
prices only tells us what their worth within that context.) Of course,
there are a number of different measures of "capital," each of which can
serve different purposes in studying the world.

The problem is that power can't be aggregated, since the different
heterogeneous types of power don't have prices as far as I can tell.

Jim Devine, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
web: http://myweb.lmu.edu/jdevine/


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