You wrote:
>The answer is clear. Once you concede that increasing
productivity growth depresses prices (or the inflation rate), the
direct consequence is Marx's law of the tendential fall in the
profit rate -- labor-displacing technology tends to lower the
general rate of profit. This is something the neoclassical
economists (and physicalist-Marxist and Sraffian economists, etc.)
refuse to accept, but it follows as the night the day. .
So, you don't think that the tendency of the profit rate to fall is based on values, but on prices alone? Doesn't it only make sense if increasing productivity growth comes in tandem with higher real wages and so a relatively higher share of surplus going to the wage fund? I thought what was implied in what Shaikh argued about Dobb was that, even if nominal wages remained the same, real wages during periods of higher productivity rose--hence the tendency of profit _rates_ (though not profits themselves) to fall.
>You go on to suggest that, by conceding that increasing
productivity growth tends to depress prices, Marx's critics are
not thereby committed to his theory that the origin of profit is
surplus-labor. I'll have to think about that. It seems on the
face of things that you're right, but I suspect that there's some
other inconsistency lurking in the background. In any case,
Marx's theory of value isn't exactly the same thing as his theory
of surplus-value.
I have alwayst confused value theory and the theory of surplus-value. Could you say some more about the difference and their relationship?
Christian