Re: [OPE-L] questions on the interpretation of
labour valu
Quoting Rakesh Bhandari
<bhandari@xxxxxxxxxxxx>:
2. Given Marx's emphasis on regular
changes in prices of production, he
would not have thought that the prices of production which governed
the
prices of the inputs could have been the same as the prices of
production
which he derives for the outputs. So even if one thinks Marx left
the
inputs in the form of values or simple prices, there is no evidence
that
he was calling for a vector of equilibrium prices in the specific
sense of
same prices for the inputs and outputs. Indeed the chapter as a
whole
indicates that Marx would have rejected the equilibrium idea that
prices
of production do not change interperiodically. To judge Marx on
the
neoclassical equilibrium terrain is to impose foreign standards on
him,
not to judge him on his own terms. Marx cannot be said to have called
for
the neoclassical equilibrium test which he then fails. But that is how
it
is presented in almost every account of Marxian economics. Take
Heinz
Kurz's entry on value in The Radical Political Economy entry, ed.
by
Malcolm Saywer as just one of countless examples. Some radical
political
economy! Though that point of view is vociferously defended on this
list;
unfortunately I have been disallowed with the AC's approval from
replying
directly.
Hi Rakesh,
Which passages in particular in Chapter 9 do you think indicate
that
Marx was assuming continuous changes in values in each industry,
period
after period?
It seems to me that in these few pages at the end of Chapter 9 Marx
is
making the theoretical point that, even though prices of production
are
not proportional to values, prices of production are nonetheless
ultimately determined by values, and that changes in prices of
production are ultimately caused by changes in values, either in
the
given industry or in industries that produce means of production
for
this industry. I don’t see any suggestion that he is assuming
that
such changes of values happen continuously, period after period,
in
each industry.
Right but Marx emphasizes here that prices of production do not
always change in the long term.
But let me take the undisputed point first. The fact that the
average rate of profit only changes in the long term actively misleads
capitalists as to what the consequences of productivity growth
are in those branches undergoing at any time the most explosive
growth. In other words, the type of thought typical of active
capitalists does not allow them to penetrate beyond the appearances to
the essences of modern society, for a grasp of the whole is the
condition of knowledge, and this is simply incompatible with
rationality in the form of rationalization concerned only with the
maximization of profits (I draw here from Rockmore's summary of
Lukacs).
So here is a crucial paragraph from this ninth chapter in terms
of Marx's holistic epistemology, i.e. the idea that a grasp of the
whole is the condition of knowledge and that capitalists are
constitutively incapable of such grasp though the kind of rationality
we have is shaped by their narrow interests:
The
theoretical conception concerning the first transformation of
surplus-value into profit, that every part of a capital yields a
uniform profit, expresses a practical fact. Whatever the composition
of an industrial capital, whether it sets in motion one quarter of
congealed labour and three-quarters of living labour, or
three-quarters of congealed labour and one-quarter of living labour,
whether in one case it absorbs three times as much surplus-labour, or
produces three times as much surplus-value than in another - in
either case it yields the same profit, given the same degree of labour
exploitation and leaving aside individual differences, which,
incidentally, disappear because we are dealing in both cases with the
average composition of the entire sphere of production. The individual
capitalist (or all the capitalists in each individual sphere of
production), whose outlook is limited, rightly believes that his
profit is not derived solely from the labour employed by him, or in
his line of production. This is quite true, as far as his average
profit is concerned. To what extent this profit is due to the
aggregate exploitation of labour on the part of the total social
capital, i. e., by all his capitalist colleagues - this
interrelation is a complete mystery to the individual capitalist; all
the more so, since no bourgeois theorists, the political economists,
have so far revealed it. A saving of labour - not only labour
necessary to produce a certain product, but also the number of
employed labourers - and the employment of more congealed labour
(constant capital), appear to be very sound operations from the
economic standpoint and do not seem to exert the least influence on
the general rate of profit and the average profit. How could living
labour be the sole source of profit, in view of the fact that a
reduction in the quantity of labour required for production appears
not to exert any influence on profit? Moreover, it even seems in
certain circumstances to be the nearest source of an increase of
profits, at least for the individual capitalist.
The philosophical significance of this chapter is rather
breath-taking once one understands Marx's views of holistic
epistemology (and the implicit critique of the capitalist perversion
of rationality) and real contradiction (the contradiction
between the law of value and the equalization of the profit rate as a
real contradiction of generalized commodity capitalist production, a
real contradiction between social production and private profit
resulting in the mediation of the price of production which raises the
class struggle to a social level).
Most of the readings we have of the transformation problem are
quite flat footed as if the problem were well understood as as a
problem of algebra.
Now to where we disagree.
In terms less than required for depressions in the average rate
of profit to register, we should assume that the change in pop
was occasioned not by a change in the general rate of profit but by a
change in the value of the commodity itself, and since the value of
the commodity can change in consequence of technical changes within
its own sphere as well as in consequence of a change in the value of
those commodities which form the elements of its constant capital,
unit values will likely tend to change before, say, the means of
production have been amortized or scrapped. That is, for the prices of
production to change, there need not be ceaseless productivity growth
in its own branch but only in one of the branches producing its means
of production. This makes it likely that reductions in unit value are
quite frequent.
Moreover, when, how often and as a result of what do you think
prices of production change?
Importantly, RIcardo himself thought that unit values were
changing very regularly as I have shown and Ricardo of course had not
yet assimilated the consequences of large scale industry.
Rakesh
ps sorry not to have replied to Dogan's question about my own
query about Althusser's critique of Hegel. I of course had the essays
in For Marx in mind, but there are other important essays as well. And
it will take me time.
Thanks.
Comradely,
Fred
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