The tendency of earnings estimates to fall

[Roger Odisio]

Shane Mage wrote:
> 
> As a portion of value, surplus value is a portion of labor time.  As accumulated
> value it remains accumulated ("dead") labor time.  Socially necessary
> average labor time is not, in Marx, the "measure" of value--it is value
> itself.  Relative price is the (deviant and biased) empirical measure of
> relative value, but because "price is value in the form of money" the
> deviations cancel each other in forming the aggregate social product
> of a given period.  And because it is the money form of value that
> is accumulated to form the capital stock, that stock
> consists of
> a quantity of money units each representing (after depreciation
> and obsolescence) a definite quantity of the social labor exercised
> during the period when it was accumulated.--sm

And so, to shift from stocks back to flows in order to relate this to
the Nat. Income Accts (NIPA):  the value of a round of production, i.
e., the completion of M-C-M', is the amount of dead labor used up in
that round (roughly depreciation, including wear and tear and
obsolesence), plus the social reproduction cost of productive labor
(*not* equal to wages of said group), plus the surplus value captured by
capital.  

Obviously, however, surplus value/variable capital (the rate of
exploitation in Marx) is vastly different than, and far exceeds, the
ratio of profits to wages in the NIPA.  Any marxian analysis of
capitalist development must then begin with the sources and uses of that
surplus value and the social class struggle far beyond the walls of the
factory.  Rather than comparing reported paper profits to that even more
useless analytical category, employee compensation of nonfinancial
corps. in the NIPA, that is.

RO