Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2006 10:37 PM Subject: [lbo-talk] technical conditions approach
> Trevor,
> I don't think you have much respect for the Sraffian alternative to
> Marxian value theory, but I don't as of yet know how you would
> respond to (or understand) its criticisms. And I am interested in
> your views.
>
>
> The total automation example is just meant as a logical exercise, a
> sort of ridiculous indication of why unpaid labor time may not be the
> cause of profit/rent/interest. I just included it because I had it at
> hand and it seemed impolite to talk about a theory on a public list
> without giving any indication of what it is.
> Wanted to do more than just throw around names.
>
>
> As you must know, one can certainly build examples with direct labor
> still employed and still say that profits and prices can (or even
> must) be determined without reference to labor values (though there
> is a question whether a technical conditions approach should be
> allowed data on the abstract direct labor hours required for each
> industry--how are various kinds of concrete labor abstracted into
> qualitatively identical hours before and through the actual
> commensuration in exchange, ask the followers of II Rubin and Alfredo
> Saad Filho in the highly recommended Value of Marx
> http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=6598).
>
> Just not yet clear on what your criticism is. All I am getting is the
> sense that you want to fly high above the theoretical debate, and I
> am interested in what you have to say about the strongest versions of
> Sraffa or Samuelson or Steedman or Hodgson beyond whose views you say
> Justin has not advanced.
>
> I'm also not sure what all the mark up talk of others is supposed to
prove.
>
> If certain brands enjoy mark ups, this does not increase surplus
> value for capital as a whole; it is only redistributes it unevenly.
>
> If there are brands that escape commodity pressure, this is surely
> not true of most commodities.
>
> Whether Walmart or Bloomingdale's achieves a kind of hybrid
> monopsony/putting out system towards industrial capitals abroad and
> succeeds in redistributing to itself most of the surplus value does
> not seem to me to speak against the labor theory of value.
>
> I couldn't follow what the break down of costs was supposed to prove.
> Why the wage differentials or differentials in value added along the
> chain? Please explain
>
> Truly interested in your views.
>
> Rakesh
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk