Date: 25 Jul 94 23:58:48
From: wpc-AT-clyder.gn.apc.org (Paul Cockshott)
Subject: Bose's argument


Was that the same Bose that the Boson was named after?

I have not read his paper but your summary of it sounds just like
Marxs argument against Smith in vol 1 of theories of surplus value, where
he is concerned to show that you can never break the value of a commodity
entirely into wages and profits. He shows that however far you push it 
back there is always a component of the value that is transmitted in 
the form of constant capital.

Marxs purpose here is to show that under capitalist production,
the means of production, and their alienated control can never be 
ignored. But since Boses argument was prefigured by Marx himself,
it is at most an argument against Smiths theory of value rather
than Marx's.

I was at the CSE a couple of weeks ago and heard from Allan Freeman
a criticism of Bohm Baverk that was new to me. BB makes the point that
Marx fails to transform the inputs in his version of the transformation
problem, whereas he should do this. Freeman argues that this is a
mistake by BB, and that Marx was right not to transform the inputs.
Freeman argues that the method used by BB and the Sraffians of having
input prices equal to output prices is wrong in principle since the
input prices applied at an earlier time period. The equation of the two
implies a physical system evolving in zero time, which is of course
unphysical. Now that he mentions this, it is blindingly obvious,
and I am surprised that I never saw it myself. I spend half my time
as a computer scientist constructing simulation models in which the
outputs of one timestep are the inputs of the next, but was so
blinded by the Baverkian assumptions that I did not see the 
fact that the standard treatment made this elementary error.

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Paul Cockshott , 		        
Phone: 041 637 2927		wpc-AT-clyder.gn.apc.org
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