Travis wrote:
"And for
what? You either think sv and therefore ultimately profits originates with
the exploitation of labour or you don't. No amount of self referential (ie
in relation to initial premises) is going to move the debate. Some people
think corn is the alpha, others entrepreneurs; and yet others who think that
it is labour which raises and transforms corn and the ambitions of
entrepreneurs into use values and thereby exchange values.
(Rakesh) So we might as well believe what ever we had already wanted to believe? And what happens if we ourselves believe contradictory things, if we are ourselves unsure about what it is believe or should believe? Wouldn't there then be a need for a more patient and reasoned approach?
(Travis) Not faith. Perhaps the realism of the starting premises however. Excuse the pun but I have no truck with models that start with corn and finish with corn. Either the premises can be justified or they can not.
Now on to the specific points:(Rakesh)
"Take the model you gave and substitute computers
for highly skilled labour, for gold semi-skilled labour and for wheat (with all due respect to my farming family) unskilled labour and what do you have?
An economy in which living labour is the alpha and omega!"
(Rakesh) Don't get the point.
(Travis) The point is simply this. It is only a logical exercise. You could substitute any heading you like for the objects in the model you cited and logically prove that they are the source of the surplus. A monkey for computers, a cat for gold, and a martian for corn. That it would be logically consistent is no proof of anything except its logical integrity.
(Rakesh)And especially since machines or the capital invested in them do seem to be a source of new value in what Marx thought was a socially objective illusion (socially objective in the sense that the illusion results not from an ideologically motivated refusal to see but from the deceptiveness of the market itself).
(Travis) It is interesting if you look at the silicon chip industry. The efficiencies are about shrinking die size so as to minimize silicon loss. The illusion is created that they are producing more with less because the previous process invovled such a high degree of waste. This process often prevokes the mistaken response that machines are responsible for creating a surplus when what they are doing is allowing for less waste. First movers reap temporary monopoly profits which are quickly competed away (about 4-6 months in the mainstream CPU market) and a new price level is established. As an aside there was interesting article in FT which mentioned that these machines are incredibly expensive not just in terms of initial cost but in terms of the human labour involved in keeping them working with precision and efficiency. Last time I checked those who tend to machines count as direct labour in the Marxian framework.
(Rakesh) The Sraffian need not deny the special active role of direct labor in production to question whether direct labor is the sole determinant of the magnitude of profit.
(Travis) The magnitude of profit of enterprise maybe determined in the short to meduim term by a whole host of factors (ie political and economic rents) but the magnitude of profit at an economy wide level is driven by the magnitude SV. I would further argue that in highly competitive sectors (such as the silicon chip sector) the magnitude of sv is directly related to the magnitude of profit of the individual enterprise. As to the question of the stability and quantitative dimensions of the relationship between SV and profit of enterprise that is an interesting discussion in its own right but then one either tacitly accepts the LTOV or one is havig a different debate.
The point I am trying to make in all of this is that it would be more interesting to spend ones energy sorting out what is going in particular sectors and national economies via the use of Marxian accounting identities than it would be to spend ones energy defending the LTOV against logical corn models. If the neoclassicals can rule the world with a parable Marxists can at least carry on with their parable and its more convincing initial premises.
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