Re: [OPE-L] Question

[Allin Cottrell <cottrell@xxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007, ajit sinha wrote:

> --- Allin Cottrell <cottrell@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > That, I believe, is a mistake: it is warping the definition of
> > value to match market price (hence my "dissolving" comment).
> ________________________
> Its not only a mistake, it simply cannot be done.
> Anybody who comes down from verbal statements and
> tries to work out the meaning of the proposition
> through mathematical example will quickly learn that.

Ajit, I don't see that your demonstration has much bearing on the
point I was making in criticism of Jerry.

You quote Marx's famous letter to Kugelmann and ask:

> Does this mean that in a commodity-producing economy the
> exchange ratios between commodities are determined by taking the
> ratios of total labor employed in various sectors?

Well, duh, of course not!  It's pretty obvious that Marx thought
no such thing.  The letter is celebrated, I think, only as stating
the rationale for the labour theory of value in general terms (and
in that respect doing a better job than the mumbo-jumbo in Chapter
1 of Capital about triangles!).

But it's kinda vague.  You're reading too much into it, if you
reckon it yields the proposition that sectoral prices should be in
proportion to the labour directly employed in the sectors (without
regard to the indirect labour).

Allin.