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[ox-en] Re: What is profit?



Hi Patrick,

what generally should be carefully distinguished are the categories 
"value" and "price". Value addresses the amount of labour being 
necessary to produce the product, and price addresses the amount of 
money the product achieves on the market when sold. As Paul mentions, 
the prices are "random variables dispersed around values". There is no 
direct relationship concerning a single product (like value=price), 
which is part of the difficulty to analyze any concrete situation. Only 
over time and location the equation value=price is valid. Maybe we can 
calculate this, when capitalism is over ;-)

On 2008-09-21 21:31, Patrick Anderson wrote:
When competition is "perfect" then commodities are sold at their
value. The commodity value is the amount of necessary work to
produce the commodity at given level of societal productivity.

When you say "sold at their value" are you talking about the "costs
of production"?

Yes, however, you have to keep in mind, that surplus value (or profit) 
is part of the product value (cost is a notion of prices, thus I avoid 
it).

If so, are you saying "consumer price" would equal "owner costs"?  If
so, then doesn't that mean profit would be zero?

No, because surplus value (or profit) is part of product value.

1. Does Oekonux (or would a 'better' economy) strive to maximize
competition?  I'm not asking if perfect competition would be strictly
achieved, only whether or not it is our goal to increase competition.

I don't know, what Oekonux strives for. For me Oekonux is a forum to 
discuss the possibilities of generalizing the principles of free 
software (or more generally: of peer production). Part of the debate 
are very different approaches.

What I support, is to replace capitalist production with peer production 
as Christian explained it. However, for me, it is only a first step, a 
transistion step. In this sense and concerning competition, I want to 
replace "capitalist competition" with, say, "peer competition". The 
first bases on the mode, that loss of others is the precondition of my 
win; the latter bases on the mode, that the selbstentfaltung of others 
is the precondition of my selbstentfaltung and vice versa.

2. As competition is maximized, do you see profit being minimized, or
is there no correlation?

I answered this question already (for capitalism): "When competition 
is "perfect" then commodities are sold at their value". Then the profit 
(surplus value) is realized. This, however, is only valid for an 
unlimited market, but playing with scenarios we can assume that.

3. If profit would be minimized, then wouldn't that "cut into" the
perceived reward due the worker according to Marx's claim that
surplus value belongs to the laborer?

No, why? The capitalist appropriates the surplus value, because the 
product is his property. The capitalist has only bought the labour 
power of the worker (and not the dead labour).

Ciao,
Stefan

-- 
Start here: www.meretz.de
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Organization: http://www.oekonux.de/projekt/
Contact: projekt oekonux.de



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