Re: [OPE-L] book review of Kliman's book

[Philip Dunn <hyl0morph@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 2007-11-20 at 11:34 +0000, Paul Cockshott wrote:
>         I am posting I review of Klimanâs book to the list, that was
>         sent to me by an old friend. I post it with his permission.
>
>
>
>         I find it quite a devastating critique of Kliman.
>
>
>

Devastating?

p.7
"So suppose that capital investment was $100 (including wage payments)
and the direct labor-time was 10 hours which produced an output that
sold for $150, then from this data you can compute that 10 hours of
labor adds $50 of ânew valueâ and therefore $1 must represent 0.2 hours
of labor."

Oops.

OK, just a slip over including wage payments.

However, the writer gives no indication that he understands the TSSI or
SSSI or Marx even.

p.10
"The illogicality of his argument becomes apparent when we look at his
MELT from the other side. Let us assume with Kliman that $1 = 1/3 hours
of labor. Then it must imply that 1 hour of labor = $3. Let us call it
labor equivalent of money (LEM). If we apply our LEM to Klimanâs example
of the two sectors above, the $ price of commodity 1 must be
$200 + (8x3) = $224 and the $ price of commodity 2 must be
$40 + (16x3) = $88. But his output prices are different. Therefore, MELT
is an irrational measure of conversion from labor to $ or $ to labor."

The confusion between price and value! Neither TSSI nor SSSI nor Marx
calculates *prices* as the constant capital transferred in dollars plus
labour converted to dollars. What is calculated here is the *value* of
output expressed in dollars.

(I take that the writer is assuming a constant MELT/LEM here.)

Cheers








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