Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : Value talk
You still don't get it. Even if there is enough demand takes up 100% of the production, the profitability drops because the stuff can be produced cheaper, but the firms who invested in the oldertechnmologies have these huge sunk costs taht they cannot nake back. Still don't understand how we move from the difficulties these backward firms face to a fall in the average rate of profit for capital-as-a-whole. I don't know wwether the rate of profit does tend to fall. This is a vexed empirical question. But I can see an argument based on the above that it might, though it would take some additional assumptions. Justin, It's not a vexed empirical question for Brenner, though Shaikh raises questions about how the capital stock is measured; but for Brenner and Shaikh and Moseley, the rate of profit did fall, and fall hard, esp for Brenner between approx. (if I remember correctly) 65-73 for US capital. Charles has to re-read Perlo; Justin, you have to re-read Brenner! I do think there has been progress in reworking official data from a value perspective (criticism of wage led profit squeeze thesis carried out by Shaikh and Moseley), I have studied Shaikh's work, and I think some of his criticisms are valid, but can be expressed without the value theoretic commitments. I'm an overproductionist a la Brenner myself. That's not the point. The question is whether profit to wage is a proxy for s/v. the answer is no; the data have to be reworked. That required new work by value theoretic Marxists. value theoretic analysis of the role of the interventionist state (Mattick, deBrunhoff), I think you overrate Mattick, though he's not bad. well thanks but I overrate--a peculiar word, I must say--Mattick along with the old Root and Branch collective, Moseley, Shaikh, Tony Smith and even O'Connor (who develops a contrary theory). Michael Perelman makes favorable references to PMSr, so does Robt Lekachman for goodness' sake. I also don't think you need value theory to say what he says. Fisk's The State and Justice makes some of the same points without the value theory. In encouraging a political theorist friend to become a Marxist years ago, I lent her this book; it's good news I suppose that I never got it back. But as I remeber Fisk does not have a theory of state debt as accumulation of fictitious capital. And I have behind me a book by Fisk on Value and Ethics, though I have not read it--it's not about labor value is it? Hasn't Fisk recently written on health care like pen-l's Charlie Andrews? analyses of the world market and unequal exchange (Amin, Bettleheim, Sau, Dussel, Carchedi), This stuff I don't know ell. I should have thrown in Tilla Siegel. value based investigations of the labor process (Tony Smith), You left out Braverman. But I think,a gain, that the argumebts do not require value theory. Tony Smith's arguments are rooted in value theory, so he does not share your estimation. Let's see if we can ask whether his best arguments are free of value theory? attempts to undertand non commodity, fiat and near money (Foley, Gansmann), I don't know this. And I should have added latest book Political Economy of Money and Finance by Makoto Itoh and Costas Lapavitsas and Makoto Itoh and last chapters in the new book by Alfredo Saad Fihlo The Value of Marx: Political Economy for Contemporary Capitalism. And there is some very crystal clear work by Martha Campbell and others in the International Journal of Political Economy. Oh, and I forgot the whole value theoretic analyses of the state (Holloway and Picciotti as well as Williams and Reuten). attempts to understand share capital (Hilferding, Henwood), Henwood's not a value theorist, are you, Doug? Good question. value based phenomenlogical studies of time (Lukacs, Postone), I know Lukacs inside and out, and I think tahtw hile he is abstractly commited to the LTV, his analyses do not presuppose value theory at all. I would answer that Lukacs' analysis is based on the Marxian concept of abstract labor if this is what you mean by abstractly committed. More importantly, Postone's theory is value theoretic through and through, and I would not consider his accomplishment degenerate, unless we mean degenerate in a good way. Haven't read Ben Fine's recent value theoretic critique of human capital theory either. Some and some. On the whole, I stand my my claim. A lot of smart people have used the framework. I don't see that their best work depends on it. Well you should certainly not be stopped from doing your best work on a value free theoretical orientation based on some combination of Marx, Robinson and Brenner, and Ian of course is free to develop his own theoretical orienation on the basis of the viewpoints that he is trying to put together which seem to be united in only aspect--they are not value theoretic. Yet some of us will stick to value theoretic Marxism because we
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: : Value talk
You still don't get it. Even if there is enough demand takes up 100% of the production, the profitability drops because the stuff can be produced cheaper, but the firms who invested in the oldertechnmologies have these huge sunk costs taht they cannot nake back. Still don't understand how we move from the difficulties these backward firms face to a fall in the average rate of profit for capital-as-a-whole. I don't know wwether the rate of profit does tend to fall. This is a vexed empirical question. But I can see an argument based on the above that it might, though it would take some additional assumptions. A degenerating research program often doesn't have a single fatal flaw. It just runs out of steam, spends all of its time trying to fix up internal problem, doesn't geberate new hypotheses and predictions and theories. I think that is a pretty good description of what has happened in Marxian value theory over the last century. You must realize that this is not an argument but an evaluation that comes across as an insult and fighting words. Well, you can feel insulted if you like, but it's not meant as an insult, just as an evaluation. I do think there has been progress in reworking official data from a value perspective (criticism of wage led profit squeeze thesis carried out by Shaikh and Moseley), I have studied Shaikh's work, and I think some of his criticisms are valid, but can be expressed without the value theoretic commitments. I'm an overproductionist a la Brenner myself. value theoretic analysis of the role of the interventionist state (Mattick, deBrunhoff), I think you overrate Mattick, though he's not bad. I also don't think you need value theory to say what he says. Fisk's The State and Justice makes some of the same points without the value theory. analyses of the world market and unequal exchange (Amin, Bettleheim, Sau, Dussel, Carchedi), This stuff I don't know ell. value based investigations of the labor process (Tony Smith), You left out Braverman. But I think,a gain, that the argumebts do not require value theory. attempts to undertand non commodity, fiat and near money (Foley, Gansmann), I don't know this. attempts to understand share capital (Hilferding, Henwood), Henwood's not a value theorist, are you, Doug? value based phenomenlogical studies of time (Lukacs, Postone), I know Lukacs inside and out, and I think tahtw hile he is abstractly commited to the LTV, his analyses do not presuppose value theory at all. clarification in differences of underconsumption, disproportionality and frop crisis theories, development of a theory of oil rent and rentier states (Bina). Don't know this. I think Justin is making a strong evaluation without having carefully evaluated above work. Some and some. On the whole, I stand my my claim. A lot of smart people have used the framework. I don't see that their best work depends on it. jks _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk
R, I think we have reached the point of diminishing marginal returns. I agree with Fred Guy: the work on the LTV for a century has been a desperate, inward-turning attempt tos how that it can be made coherent in the face of increasing masses of fatal objections, and it's not doing real work. It's at most a heuristic for--and not exaplantrion of--the importsnt points you make, that commodities are the products of labor, and that any society has to make large scale decsiions about hwo to divide up its socially necessary labor. But I think we have a stand off here, and probably should move on. jks Justin, a short reply. the disallowing of qualitative change in outputs and inputs and setting them equal in price by assumption seems to make analysis inherently static. This is why these assumptions are hotly contested. As far as I can tell, this is just a way of reminding us that any commodities out there are the product of labor, an important point, but npt necessarily one concerning value. yes Shaikh is reminding us that inputs do not magically become outputs without the toil and misery of real labor. There is no production of things by things. There are outputs because labor has been materialized therein. And the outputs that we have both in variety and quantity are those that have proven to be socially necessary in and through exchange wherein the expansion of value is culminated. The technical conditions of production do not themselves yield a surplus and the technical conditions are themselves determined socially: Value--socially necessary labor time--determines the technical conditions of production Thus both 'inputs' and 'outputs' are the use forms of materialized value, and we can they say that in the *real* process it is values that determine the physical production data... That's very fast. Why are these determined by value, SNALT, merely because they are produced by labor over a period of time? The input means of production are not values simply because they were produced by labor-- my home cooked pooris are not values. The input mop are values because they proved to have represented socially necessary abstract labor time in that they ex-changed for money at the commencement of the circuit of capital. Yet though values, the means of production do not automatically transfer their value to the output; any idle time threatens the moral depreciation of those means of production--such that they will represent a lesser quantity of socially necessary abstract labor time. The very threat of moral depreciation underlines that we are not dealing with a technical process, plain and simple, but a social process in and through which socially necessary labor time is determined. As John Ernst recently pointed out, it is the ongoing threat of moral depreciation--that is, the loss of the value of the means of production--that compels capitalists to agonise the working class; the most powerful means for the reduction of toil and trouble become the surest way of prolonging and intensifying the working day. Without the theory of value we are are not conceptually prepared to understand the most disturbing paradoxes of capitalist development. Rakesh Pearson after all thought that he could develop a purely descriptive/phenomenalist theory of heredity by making linking the character of an individual through regression equations to the average character of each ancestral generation. I don't knwo what Sraffa had in mine, but that isn't my interest. However the quanities I want to posit should exist and be useful. Similarly I am saying that the physical production data do not themselves determine the profit rate, though they can be used to calculate it. But you, and Shaikh, have shown that SNALT does determine it. Why do we need references to genes when we can quantitatively link generations with data of ancentral heredity? Why do we need labor value when we can calculate the profit rate with data of physical production alone? It is in the interests of realistically grasping the actual process that our theories should refer to genes and labor value. Justin, I would think then that your commitment to realism (at least at levels above the subatomic one) would have you argue in favor the theory of labor value? Well, I'll even be a quantum realist if someone shows us how. Maybe the many worlds interpretation is true. But my realism is a Arthur-Finean, case-by-case, pragmatic realism; I'll quantify over whatever our best science says there is. I'm not convinced that our best science says the LTV is true, or that SNALT by itself determines prices and profits. jks _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk
R, I think we have reached the point of diminishing marginal returns. I agree with Fred Guy: the work on the LTV for a century has been a desperate, inward-turning attempt tos how that it can be made coherent in the face of increasing masses of fatal objections, and it's not doing real work. It's at most a heuristic for--and not exaplantrion of--the importsnt points you make, that commodities are the products of labor, and that any society has to make large scale decsiions about hwo to divide up its socially necessary labor. But I think we have a stand off here, and probably should move on. jks Justin, you expect us to move on after you characterize my attempts as inward turning--this is exactly what the Marxian law of value is not! And these are not the points I am after, as should be clear to you after years of debate. There is a willful ignorance on your part that is disturbing to say the least. You are trivializing what the law of value is meant to explain so that you can walk away from it without loss. This is in fact dishonest. And please do not use the hot and heavy rhetoric unless you can explicitly name the fatal objection. We were dealing with the redundancy charge which even if true is not by any means a fatal objection, for all it shows in itself is that calculation by value is inconvenient and derivative. Even Sen doesn't think much of the charge on which you seem focused. You have yourself killed no thing in this discussion. Or do you really think GA Cohen's piece on the labor theory of value is definitive? Moreover, note that I raised the question whether and how any theory other than labor value makes sense of moral depreciation and the paradoxes to which it gives rise. You give no reply. And we need to be clear yet another thing. Freudianism and Marxism would clearly be falsifiable if people were not to act irrationally and capitalist development were to crisis free, respectively. As Grossmann demonstrated, the law of value finds its confirmation not only in the recurrence of general, protracted crises but in its accurate prediction of (and specification of) the kinds of techno-organizational changes that are needed by both individual capitals and the capitalist class-as-a-whole for an exit from crises of a general and protracted type. The law of value which was applied by Mattick Sr to the accumulation of fictitious capital in the form of govt debt was confirmed by mixed economy going up in stagflationary ashes and by the limits of Keynesian intervention since then. The law of value is not confirmed at the level of exchange ratios but rather more like the law of gravity is confirmed when a house falls on one's head. Rakesh
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk
Justin, you expect us to move on after you characterize my attempts as inward turning--this is exactly what the Marxian law of value is not! Well, I'm out of energy, anyway. And these are not the points I am after, as should be clear to you after years of debate. There is a willful ignorance on your part that is disturbing to say the least. You are trivializing what the law of value is meant to explain so that you can walk away from it without loss. This is in fact dishonest. So shoot me. And please do not use the hot and heavy rhetoric I thought I was pretty mild. unless you can explicitly name the fatal objection. We were dealing with the redundancy charge which even if true is not by any means a fatal objection, for all it shows in itself is that calculation by value is inconvenient and derivative. A degenerating research program often doesn't have a single fatal flaw. It just runs out of steam, spends all of its time trying to fix up internal problem, doesn't geberate new hypotheses and predictions and theories. I think that is a pretty good description of what has happened in Marxian value theory over the last century. Or do you really think GA Cohen's piece on the labor theory of value is definitive? I think it's a perfect disaster. his absolute worst piece, showing inexplicable and appalling ignorance of fundamental issues. Moreover, note that I raised the question whether and how any theory other than labor value makes sense of moral depreciation and the paradoxes to which it gives rise. You give no reply. Haven't really thought about it. And we need to be clear yet another thing. Freudianism and Marxism would clearly be falsifiable if people were not to act irrationally and capitalist development were to crisis free, respectively. ? Anyway, falsifiability is not my thing. I'm a pragmatist, not a Popperian. Fruitfulness is my thing. The LTV isn't fruitful. As Grossmann demonstrated, the law of value finds its confirmation not only in the recurrence of general, protracted crises but in its accurate prediction of (and specification of) the kinds of techno-organizational changes that are needed by both individual capitals and the capitalist class-as-a-whole for an exit from crises of a general and protracted type. The law of value which was applied by Mattick Sr to the accumulation of fictitious capital in the form of govt debt was confirmed by mixed economy going up in stagflationary ashes and by the limits of Keynesian intervention since then. The law of value is not confirmed at the level of exchange ratios but rather more like the law of gravity is confirmed when a house falls on one's head. A fallacy: Your theory preducts that there will crises. The theory posits X. There are crises. So X exists. I have argued, however, that the main lines of the theoey can be reconstituted without X and still give us the same results. Also, I note that Marxisn crisis theory is highly underdeveloped, and IMHO the best version of it, Brenner's, does not use value theory. Anyway, I'm plum tuckered out. jks _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk
I thought I was pretty mild. Referring to your interlocutor as desperate and inward turning is clearly not mild, but I suspect that I shall be blamed for the rancor on the list as I was supposed to take the heat for Paul Phillips' explosion. Moreover, note that I raised the question whether and how any theory other than labor value makes sense of moral depreciation and the paradoxes to which it gives rise. You give no reply. Haven't really thought about it. but this was my reply to your query. Yes of course the input means of production can be said to embody/represent indirect and direct labor time, you concede, but why does this make them values, you seemed to ask. And my reply was that their character as values is revealed by the threat that they will undergo moral depreciation, i.e., come to represent less socially necessary abstract labor time, and the compulsion the ruling class puts on the working class to consume them before they are morally depreciated. This is how Marx explains what puzzled JS Mill: the best tools for the reduction of labor become unfailing means for the prolongation and intensification of the working day. Marx explains this puzzle by understanding these means of production as values-in-process, not simply given technical conditions of production. A fallacy: Your theory preducts that there will crises. The theory posits X. There are crises. So X exists. I have argued, however, that the main lines of the theoey can be reconstituted without X and still give us the same results. You're not reading carefully. The theory explains both the recurrence of general, protracted crises and the means by which they are overcome. The law of value thus pits so called orthodox Marxists against underconsumptionist social democrats. Also, I note that Marxisn crisis theory is highly underdeveloped, and IMHO the best version of it, Brenner's, does not use value theory. Anyway, I'm plum tuckered out. Does Brenner agree that he does not use value theory? As far as I can see, he is in part saying that the full value of commodities could not be realized due to international competition. But Marx's crisis theory is able to explain the onset of crisis even when demand is strong enough for commodities to be realized at their full value. rb
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Value talk
I thought I was pretty mild. Referring to your interlocutor as desperate and inward turning is clearly not mild, I refereed to the theory that way, and not to any of its advocates. but I suspect that I shall be blamed for the rancor on the list as I was supposed to take the heat for Paul Phillips' explosion. Far as I can tell everyone's being uncommonly civil. note that I raised the question whether and how any theory other than labor value makes sense of moral depreciation and the paradoxes to which it gives rise. You give no reply. Haven't really thought about it. but this was my reply to your query. Well, I still haven't thought about it. Yes of course the input means of production can be said to embody/represent indirect and direct labor time, you concede, but why does this make them values, you seemed to ask. And my reply was that their character as values is revealed by the threat that they will undergo moral depreciation, i.e., come to represent less socially necessary abstract labor time, and the compulsion the ruling class puts on the working class to consume them before they are morally depreciated. Ah, I guess I have thought about it, not under that description. I don't see why the LTV has to be true to explain this. I have never denied, nor does the the most orthodox bourgeois economist, that if you can save labor costs by adopting a new production technique, that people who have sunk costs in onld labor intensive production techniques are going to have trouble making money. But we don't have to talk about value, least of do we have to say that value is a quantity measured by SNALT. Does Brenner agree that he does not use value theory? As far as I can see, he is in part saying that the full value of commodities could not be realized due to international competition. But Marx's crisis theory is able to explain the onset of crisis even when demand is strong enough for commodities to be realized at their full value. Why don;y you ask him? But read him! If he does use it, it's well-hideen. This supports my view that value is a fifth wheel. jks _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
