Yeah, I know there's a diff between profits and SV, profits being realized monetary form of SV.
As for the corporate abstitence stuff, I am not stuck on the notion, but isn't the ol' Protestant Ethic point about the abstitent that they get back their sacrifices in the form of greater wealh, the grasshopper and the and, etc? Corporations who invest in R&D, hwo's that diff?
T Fast, yes I know that if you stipulate that all value is measured by embodied labor amd there is no other source of value than labor (you need both assumptions), then the Differential Rent examples turn out, definitionally, to be about the redistribution of SV. Howevber, and this is the point, they show that there is a non-labor source of profit -- e.g., monopoly power. which escapes the idea that all profit is due to the exploitation of labor. The monopolist's monopoly profits are die to his possessing a monopoly, not to his exploitating his workers. This point is the thin edge of a big wedge that establ;ishes what was obvious to start with, that a LTOV/LV stimpulation is arbitrary and only as useful as its results.
I raelly think that Marxists should stop clinging to these formulations with such ferocity. It isolstes them and bores everyone else. They cam have everything they want without the fundamentalism. The LTOV/LV is a useful heuristic for some purposes. It makes a point in certain ways that may be the clearest way to make it.
But it's not like value theory is The Truth rather than a useful idealization for some purposes or even than marginalism and neoclassical price theory are Bourgeois Lies rather than useful idealizations for certain purposes. Takea cue from the pragmatists. Thsi is a pluralistic universe. Relax.
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> andie nachgeborenen wrote:
>
> > These erxamples show that there are other
> >cources of profits than exploitation.
>
> I don't want to step into that transformational
> minefield, but
> there's a difference between profits, as understood
> in the modern
> accounting sense, and surplus value, which can be
> divided into many
> different forms (profit, interest, rent,
> dividends...).
>
> And just what is corp abstinence, anyway? They get
> the investment
> spending back in profits. Didn't Kalecki say
> something like workers
> spend what they get, capitalists get what they
> spend?
>
> Doug
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