When in doubt about measurement, it may be wise to resort to scissor analysis or how things move on a trend and how the law of value cuts into the fog speculation. Why would one be so interested in reading a more or less constant trajectory of depreciation when what really matters is what is happening on the variable labor side. One thing is for sure, capitalist keep track of labor time and, inadvertently, the difference between the exchange and use values of labor.
In the movement in thought from values to prices of production to actual prices, values are preserved not so much to determine the price level in the immediacy of the moment but to expose the exploitation at the heart of capitalist production that sways development in favor of one class or another or in today's language, to allocate resources. In a sense values are preserved and not negated and hold primacy in the laws of production, consumption and exchange.
converting values into prices is not doable without some austere assumptions. In Marx's I think it was meant for illustrative purposes and in which the category 'prices of production' arose. the issue is not to quantify every general category like depreciation of machines because the least of the reasons for not doing so would be a ridiculous decomposition of fact in a static mode. The point is to be able to move from the part to the whole and back. that is to say, in measurement issues it is not the exploitation of a single worker that could be closely measured but that of the class, etc.. with time demarcation and periodisation probelms.
I recall but do not know the source that when Engels was asked about the substance of power his answer was knowledge.
He is now a provost in the Cal. State System.
On Mon, Jan 17, 2005 at 10:22:49PM +0200, ertugrul ahmet tonak wrote:
> Why are not these works (and many other similar ones), which explain
> prices, based on serious theory?
>
> Ochoa, E. (1988) "Values, Prices, and WageProfit Curves in the U.S.
> Economy," Cambridge Journal of Economics, 13(3), September: 413430.
>
> Ochoa, E. (1984) Labor Values and Prices of Production: An Interindustry
> Study of the U.S. Economy, 19471972. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, New
> School for Social Research, New York.
>
> Ahmet
>
> Jonathan Nitzan wrote:
>
> > OK, so I won't ask serious theory to explain prices.
> >
> > Carrol Cox wrote:
> >
> >> Jonathan Nitzan wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>> What I'm trying to say, Jim, is that to observe prices and to conclude
> >>> from these observations about theoretical values and theoretical
> >>> utility/productivity is to go in the wrong direction. I always thought
> >>> that theory should explain the world, not the other way around.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >> Asking serious theory to explain prices is like asking quantum mechanics
> >> to give you the correct oven temperature for roast lamb.
> >>
> >> Carrol
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
>
> --
>
>
> I was recently asked whether universities should teach
> values. My response was that universities, whether
> implicitly or otherwise, always, always teach values.
> They teach values in the way they hire and treat employees.
>
> Ruth Simmons
> President, Brown University
>
> ------------------------------------------
> E. Ahmet Tonak
> Simon’s Rock College of Bard
> Great Barrington, MA 01230
>
> Phone: 413-528 7488
> Fax: 413-528 7365
> Cell: 413-329 7856
>
> Homepage: www.simons-rock.edu/~eatonak
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
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