I was making more or less the first point Rakesh makes here. In other contexts I would defend the Sraffan redundancy thesis, but nothing I said in my reply to Doug depended on, alluded to, implied, referred to, or invokes any critique of value theory at all -- in fact, quite the reverse. You mus not assume that because I think that value theory is redundant, unhelpful, marginally coherent if that much, etc., that I mkae those point every time I talk about it. I am quite capaple of arguing dialectically from inside positions I don't accpt. I did that here.
That said, I'd still like a short survey of the current landscape of views by defenders of value theory. Bearing in mind that I don't have time for Rakesh' depth of scholarship in this area, any more than he has time more mine in the literature on methods of choice of lead counsel and attorneys fees awards in common fund class actions.
--- Rakesh Bhandari <bhandari at berkeley.edu> wrote:
> "on whether profits have an origin in something
> other than something
> that happens at the point of production."
>
> I would make two points.
>
>
> 1.. Profits are increased on an annual basis by the
> decreasing of the
> lags needed to sell the product and secure
> financing. But that does
> not mean that profits have an origin in something
> that happens at the
> point of production. It only means that production
> can be more
> continuous and the mass of surplus value thereby
> increased. Recall
> Marx's analysis of turnover. If the advanced
> variable capital can be
> made to return earlier, it can be used again to
> appropriate unpaid
> labor time. Time--turnover speed--plays an important
> role in Marx's
> theory of surplus value, but it is not made an
> autonomous factor such
> that waiting itself fetishistically yields profit.
>
> The annual rate of surplus value, the ratio of total
> surplus value
> over a year to the original variable capital, is
> increased. Most
> Marxists are thus mistaken to describe the
> financial and commercial
> sectors as simply unproductive. Those sectors can
> decrease what
> Duncan Foley has called lags and speed up the
> rotation of capital and
> thus increase the amount of surplus value yielded on
> an annual basis.
> That is, if industrial capitalists don't have to
> wait to secure
> financing or sell output themselves, they can more
> quickly resume
> production. I think workers in all three
> sectors--production,
> finance, and commerce--contribute to the production
> of surplus value,
> and are thus productive. In other words, commercial
> and financial
> capitalists are not likely deducing more surplus
> value than they are
> making possible the production of. Commercial and
> financial capital
> are thus not necessarily a burden on the growth of
> capital. Their
> overall contribution to the reproduction of capital
> seems likely to
> me to be positive, though to be sure finance may at
> times sabotage
> industry. As I have long argued on this list, the
> charge of
> unproductive connotes a kind of parasitism. The
> whole history of anti
> Marxian (viz national) socialism has been based on
> images of
> parasitic merchants and bankers, i.e. demonized
> Jews.
>
> 2. There is no good alternative to Marx's theory of
> the origins and
> nature of surplus value. The Sraffian alternative is
> based
> (surprisingly enough) on abstraction from material
> conditions.
>
> Samuelson and Steedman are probably correct that the
> fundamental
> Sraffian challenge to Marx's value theory is the
> charge of redundancy.
>
> What Samuelson and Steedman emphasize is that the
> quantitative
> allocation of social labor time is determined by the
> techniques of
> production. If advanced techniques are available in
> one branch and
> not another, it could be that less social labor time
> will have to be
> allocated to the former branch than the latter even
> if demand is
> relatively higher for its output.
>
> But once we have the techniques of production in
> terms of which the
> allocation of social labor time is ultimately
> determined, prices and
> profits
> can be determined, it could be argued, without any
> reference to values.
>
> But can one really move from techniques of
> production, coupled with a
> political resolution of the distributional question,
> to determination
> of prices and profits? What are the questionable
> assumptions built
> into this theory of determination? What happens when
> the techniques
> of production,themselves the evanaescent
> objectifications of social
> labor, are changing from period to period? Is there
> anything solid
> there on the basis of which to do the determination?
> Isn't freezing
> the technical conditions metaphysical in its own
> way?
>
> Can we avoid determination of market phenomena of
> price and profit
> in terms of social labor time magnitudes in a
> dynamic setting? I
> think not.
>
>
> Again: technical conditions are themselves the
> objectification of
> labor, and if they are changing interperiodically
> there is in fact
> nothing material there with
> which to determine prices and profits. For this
> reason, In any analysis of
> the dynamics of accumulation, the technical
> conditions approach is less
> materialist, more based on an ideal construct than
> the theory of value.
>
> Where in THIS world is this economy in which all the
> kinds of outputs
> are the same as all the kinds of inputs and the
> techniques used to
> produce the inputs are the same as the techniques
> used to produce to
> produce the outputs?
>
> Where does this fixed technical conditions economy
> exist except in
> the mind as a mental construct, indeed a fantasy?
>
> How can given technical conditions, something which
> only exists in
> the mind as a counterfactual (given technical
> conditions are only
> what WOULD exist if technical conditions do not
> change as they in
> fact do), provide a more materialist grounding for a
> theory of prices
> and profits than the labor theory of value?
>
>
> I am not saying that we cannot fix the technical
> conditions of production
> for an analysis of interdepartmental exchange in the
> cases of simple and
> expanded production. But this is an analysis of the
> conditions of
> exchange (and realization of surplus value)in any
> actually reproducing
> economy (also will the elements of production
> continue to be available).
> Marx's Capital II models are not about the
> determination of prices and
> profits in a dynamic setting. In terms of that
> problem there are no fixed
> technical conditions of production except through an
> ideal construct;
> there is no empirical data about fixed technical
> conditions because they
> don't actually exist. There are no fixed technical
> conditions in terms of
> which one can provide a materialist grounding for a
> theory of prices and
> profits
>
> But the expenditure of social labor time is real and
> material.
>
> The labor theory of value provides a more solid
> materialist grounding.
> It's not meta-physical. It's in fact more physical
> and materialist than
> the appeal to fixed technical conditions of
> production which is in fact
> nothing more than a mental abstraction. It's not
> labor value that is a
> mental abstraction as Sombart charged in another
> context.
>
>
> The Sraffian theory of value seems to be
> metaphysical in a
> way that Marx's theory of value is not. It's
> metaphysical
=== message truncated ===>
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