Re: : Value talk

[Rakesh Bhandari <rakeshb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Justin writes:

> . Or (2) (as Rakesh suggests) there is athe moral deprecaition line,
> the idea that value explains crisis.


Crisis is  explained on the basis of the law of value, not by
reference to moral depreciation at all. In fact I did not suggest
that moral depreciation explains crisis at all. I underlined that it
helped to explain why machinery has not seemed to fufill its task of
reducing the torment of labor. You simply are not reading carefully.
And you haven't yet proposed an alternative set of concepts by which
to understand moral depreciation.


> As I have shown here by restating the argument without reference to
> value, and as Brenner has shown in greater length, value does no
> work in this story.

Have you followed any of the criticism of Brenner's theory?

There may be a great loss in moving from value theory's explanatory
focus on the vertical relations of production, the relation of dead
to living labor in the abode of production, to a focus on the
horizontal relations among capitals in the realm of circulation;

there have been questions whether Brenner's repudiation of the wage
squeeze explanation is consistent with his Okishio-inspired argument
that a falling rate of profit does in fact require an increase in the
real wage;

it's not clear that Brenner has been able to explain why
overcompetition reduced mark ups more than costs;

it's not explained why effective demand becomes too weak for all
commodities to be realized at value (again it seems to me that
Brenner is implying that as a result of international competition the
commodities of weaker capitals could not be realized at value, which
seems to point in the way of protectionism, not workers' revolution;
and leaves open the question of whether there are limits to
accumulation even on the assumption that all commodities can be
realized at value);

it's not sufficiently elaborated why the exit of inefficient capitals
has been so prolonged ; the US competitive position--especially in
those industries that James Galbraith defines as high value, that is
a high ratio of profits, wages, and salaries to worker--was
maintained or regained with the dollar picking up and wages high
(especially in those high value industries), so there are empirical
problems with Brenner's account of the sources of the renewed
strength of US capital in particular.

This is just what I remember from our previous exchanges. I am not
even looking at the file I have on this second Brenner debate.


rb