Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 12:00:49 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: Re: M-TH: value theory and intuitive expla


On Sun, 27 Oct 1996 shmage-AT-pipeline.com wrote:

I said:
>  
> "The challenge for the value theorist is to 
> explain what reference to value adds." 
>  
You said

> One of the things that value "adds" is the conceptual understanding of
> *capital* as an economic, quantitatively determined, category.  For Marx,
> capital is accumulated "dead" labor.  The most crucial economic category,
> the rate of profit, is shown by Marx to depend on the *quantitative*
> relationship between the *aggregate* of this accumulated past labor and the
> *aggregate* living labor set in motion by it.  No non-Marxian theory has
> even come close to a satisfactory concept of capital--most try to dissolve
> it entirely into the fantastical notion of "discounted present value of the
> future income stream that will be derived from the capital assets."  To
> quote the very best of non-adherents to the labor theory of value, Joan
> Robinson: 
>  
> "The evaluation of a stock of capital goods is the most perplexing point in
> the whole of the analysis which we have undertaken. Indeed in reality it is
> insoluble in principle." (The Accumulation of Capital, p.117) 
>  
The problem is that the math doesn't work with the quantitative accounts.
Either you run into contradictions, or you get ouit of them by specifying
assumptions so unrealistic that it undermines the value odf the model, and
in any case there's the Sraffa-Steedman fifth wheel objection. Shane is
just saying one thing that quantative valur theory is supposed to do, Most
mathematically inclined Marxist economists who have thought about it have
concluded that value theory doesn't do the trick. --Justin




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