ALB
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He's actually based in the Kingston University which falls within the area of West London branch, so we could contact him. What, a debate on "Is the Labour Theory of Value" valid?
Dave B wrote:I think computing software and associated paraphernalia is an interesting example as they are machines after a fashion and once created can be replicated for nothing.In that case they have nothing — no value — to transfer to the product. Robbo's quote from MacCulloch makes this point, as does Marx in this passage from Chapter 9 of Volume I:
Quote:If we look at the means of production, in their relation to the creation of value, and to the variation in the quantity of value, apart from anything else, they appear simply as the material in which labour-power, the value-creator, incorporates itself. Neither the nature, nor the value of this material is of any importance. The only requisite is that there be a sufficient supply to absorb the labour expended in the process of production. That supply once given, the material may rise or fall in value, or even be, as land and the sea, without any value in itself; but this will have no influence on the creation of value or on the variation in the quantity of value.robbo203 wrote:He would probably say that even with relatively labour intensive businesses, machines still add value to the product as opposed to simply transfer the value congealed in them over the lifetime of the machine.But does Keen actually say this? And does he say that it is only machines that add surplus value and not the other elements of Marx's constant capital (academic economics's "non-labour inputs")? If so, why does he exclude buildings, raw materials and power from creating surplus value too? Or does he accept the concept of "constant capital" but wants to narrow it to exclude machines? If so, again why?I'm a bit surprised that, as an academic economist even if one who wants to make a name for himself as a bit of an unorthpdox one, he has any use for the concept of "value" at all and doesn't want to try to analyse the capitalist economy in terms of price only.(which the so-called "transformation problem" is basically all about).
robbo203 wrote:I think the belief that they do is implicit in "Okishio's theorem" – the argument that investing in more machinery must raise profitability otherwise the capitalists wouldnt make such an investment from which it is inferred that machines must ipso facto produce surplus value.As I suspected, it seems that there is a confusion between the creation of (value and) surplus value and its realisation. Due to the averaging of the rate of profit, capitalist enterprises with relatively more fixed capital tend to capture more surplus value (from the pool of surplus value created by the working class as a whole) than is created in them — otherwise there'd be no incentive to invest in more up-to-date and productive machinery. But it is not the machinery itself that creates the surplus value.
What's wrong with Marx's own view as set out in Chapter 8 of Volume I of Capital on "Constant Capital and Variable Capital" where he explains why he describes capital invested in machinery, buildings, raw materials, etc as "constant" — because they only transfer the whole or a part of their value unchanged to the product.That machines transfer a part of their value is shared by accountants where the wear and tear of machines is counted as "depreciation", a transfer of their cost to the product which will needed to be replaced.It is also shared by national accounts statisticians with their concept of "value added" (their actual term). Here's their definition of Gross Value Added:
Quote:Gross value added is the value of output less the value of intermediate consumption; it is a measure of the contribution to GDP made by an individual producer, industry or sector; gross value added is the source from which the primary incomes of the SNA [System of National Accounts] are generated and is therefore carried forward into the primary distribution of income account. ( https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=1184 )and of Net Value Added:
Quote:Net value added is the value of output less the values of both intermediate consumption and consumption of fixed capital ( https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=176 )In other words, GVA less depreciation, though "consumption of fixed capital" conveys the meaning better. NVA is the nearest that can be got to Marxian s (surplus value) + v (variable capital)..So accountants and startisticians (also opposed to professors of bourgeois economics) accept that machinery, etc transfer a part of their value to the product. When this is excluded, what is left — net value added — is a measure of the new value created. Marxian economics says that this (which in fact is calculated as profits + wages) has been created by the exercise of productive labour-power (which the statisticians don't accept of course).What is Steve Keen's objection? Has it something to do with the averaging of the rate of profit meaning that constant capital "attracts" more profit than the value its transfers?
You must be thinking of Hal Draper and this 1962 article of his:https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1962/xx/dictprolet.html
I was once at a debate between Wedgewood Benn and the Green Party at which he made the point that revolutions are inspired by hope of a better future rather than by fear of worse one (predictably, the Green Party representative was speaking doom and gloom and predicting the end of the world in 40 years, etc, etc). I think Benn had a valid point. In fact fear can lead people to support reaction rather than revolution.
This article from the Socialist Standard discusses the difference between national accounting in the West and in the one-time state capitalist countries of Russia and Eastern Europe:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2005/no-1207-march-2005/cooking-books-1-lies-damned-lies-and-statistics
Quote:The artifice that the government statisticians found to get out of this has been to treat government spending as productive, as resulting in a “product” (education, health care, administration, law and order, “defence”, though not “social security”). As a result, national output is inflated by as much as 20 percent. The former state capitalist countries of Russia and Eastern Europe did not count such government spending as productive, i.e. did not double count it as part of output, and when they adopted the same national accounting system as in the rest of the capitalist world their GDPs jumped by 18-24 percent depending on the country.G'day Mike and welcome to the forum. The reason why I mentioned De Leonism was this passage which suggests that socialism wouldn't be entirely "money-free" as there would still be a "medium of exchange", presumably labour-time vouchers or so-called "labour money":
Mike Ballard wrote:Socialism is a different mode of producing and distributing wealth. As use-values are no longer saddled with their exchange-value in order to be sold in the market for a price which fluctuates with supply and demand around exchange-value and instead, use-values are distributed on the basis of labour time put into creating the social store of goods and services, the medium of exchange is not longer a commodity–it is not traded on the market, it has no price, it no longer embodies the alienated wealth of the producers as the producers sociall own and democratically manage the collective product of their labour.I don't this system is either necessary or workable or even desirable (as it would still tie consumption to work done — and it would still involved "pricing" goods and services).
Kaz, I think you've got the wrong Mike Ballard. This one sounds more like he's been in the SLP (De Leonist).
Our feathered friend doesn't half lead us on wild goose chases. First, it was about whether the Sun moves round the Earth. Then, it was about whether external reality exists. Now, it's about whether 2 + 2 = 4. All of which are to be settled by a referendum. It's just not possible to have a meaningful discussion with him.
