Date: Thu, 07 Mar 1996 01:51:13 -0800
From: B Mayer <concrete-AT-idiom.com>
Subject: Re: "Value Pump"


rakesh bhandari wrote:
> 
> > Hugh Rodwell wrote:
> >The process of drawing off value from low-tech, high labour sectors > 
> >(low composition of capital) to technologically advanced sectors 
> >(high composition of capital) in order to equalize the respective 
> >rates of profit, then becomes clearer. The differences between the 
> >prices of production (including the general rate of profit) and the 
> >values (including surplus value) of a society's products, even though 
> >they can be enormous in individual spheres of production, vanish when 
> >social production as a whole is considered.
> 
> Hugh, isn't this  an equilibrium view of competition in that it 
>functions to distribute surplus value 'equally' to each unit of 
>capital. Such an equilibriating conception of competition is of course 
>at odds with everyday usage of the word 'competition' (perhaps those 
>who versed in the philosophy of Wittgenstein will have something to say 
>here).
> 
>  What about the competition which results from the pursuit of extra
> surplus, the techno-organizational transformations by which one 
>capital outstrips and eventually destroys another, temporarily enjoying 
>surplus profits?  Here competition does not function to bring the 
>system in equilibrium.
> 
> The person who taught me Marx (Richard A. Walker, Prof of geography 
>here at UC Berkeley) refers to the equilibriating function as weak 
>competition and the latter function as strong competition.
> 
> I am looking forward to Alan Freeman and Guglielmo Carchedi's new 
>volume Marx and Non-Equilibrium Economics, which will probably take me 
>a decade to read.  But I have the sense that unlike so much other 
>economics, I will be rewarded with actual knowledge, at a fairly high 
>level of abstraction (!), of the law of motion of capital.
> 
> Let me make clear that I have been very stimulated by your presence on 
>the list; one of your first posts on subjectivity was wonderful.
> 
> Rakesh
> 

I have to side with Rakesh (who seems to be back from the viral dead) on 
this one. The only reason I know what the hell he's talking about is 
because I happened across a work called _Frontiers of Political Economy_ 
by Guglielmo Carchedi, wherein is explained all this stuff about 
equilization of the rate of profit and surplus profit, etc. Please 
correct me if I'm wrong, but as far as I can see, the process of drawing 
off the surplus profit exists not *in order to* equilize the rate of 
profit, but rather the other way around: the tendency towards the 
equilization of the rate of profit generates an uneven distribution of 
the surplus value on the basis of the differing organic compositions. 
Thus disequilibrium.

This is all friendly criticism, Hugh.  Rakesh is a very knowlegeable 
person who has begun to acquaint me with a whole train of Marxist 
thinking on political economy which could be quite useful in overcoming 
the legacy of Ernst Mandel - I refer in particular to Henryk Grossmann 
and Paul Mattick, the latter of which I am only familiar with via 
Charchedi. Neither Trotsky nor Nahuel Moreno appear to have been 
familiar with these, although they were of the same corresponding 
generations (Trotsky-Grossmann, Moreno-Mattick).  One of our many tasks 
today is to recoup the various fragments of Marxist understanding 
scattered far and wide during the dark ages of the Stalinist hegemony, 
and not all of these are to be found within the Trotskyist tradition, 
strictly speaking, particularly with regards to political economy, while 
it is precisely in this regard that that which claims to be part of that 
tradition, needs to be winnowed out.

			-Brad Mayer


     --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

     ------------------