[OPE-L:5239] Re: Re: Re: [Mike W] Re: use-value as quantitative

[Rakesh Narpat Bhandari <rakeshb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

re 5231

>  So they try to find measures of the "qualitative improvement" of
> capital. (The new machine, which costs the same as the old one, can
> shape twice as many pieces of metal or execute twice as many
> instructions.) This is completely foreign to the Marxian/Classical
> (and even /Sraffian) way of looking at capital, and, as far as I can
> tell, just adds confusing noise to the macroeconomic data. If, as
> Marx argues, the use-value of a machine to the capitalist is the
> amount of wage cost it saves, changes in the concrete performance of
> the machine are irrelevant.
>
> Duncan

Hi Duncan,
It seems to me that Marx is not so exclusively interested in the
value surplus at the expense of use value. For example,   Marx
criticizes Ricardo for only being concerned with net revenue (pure
profit), the value surplus of price over costs, and not gross
revenue, i.e., the mass of use values necessary for the subsistence
of the working population.  Marx criticizes Ricardo precisely for
only figuring these use values as costs which are to be pushed down
as low as possible. So for an employer who makes $2000 profit on a
capital of
$20,000--10%--it is utterly irrelevant whether his capital sets 100
or 1000 people into motion...as long as in all instances profit does
not fall below $2,000. Since as you say above anything other than
this value surplus is, as you say above, noise to the macroeconomic
data, Marx writes: "By denying the importance of gross revenue, i.e,
the volume of production and consumption--apart from the value
surplus--and hence denying the importance of life itself, political
economy's abstraction reaches the peak of infamy."

Moreover, as I suggested in my last post, the expansion in the mass
of use values in which a given sum of value is represented is indeed
of great INDIRECT significance for the valorization process. For
example,  with an expanded  mass of the elements of production, even
if their value is the same, more workers can be introduced into the
productive process and in the next cycle of production these workers
will be producing more value.

There is indeed for Marx a dialectic of use value and value in more
than just the consumption of labor power. Steve credits Rosdolsky for
rescuing this key element of Marx's theory. But if Steve were to
study the footnotes of Rosdolsky, he will find that he is drawing
from Grossmann's work. In both HG's magnum opus and dynamics book
there is attention to said dialectic.

Yours, Rakesh