Positive Profits with Negative Surplus Value

Understanding and overcoming the “positive profits with negative surplus-value” paradox

“…Since negative activity levels do not exist, this only means that in fact that even contracting these processes to zero the net output of the overabundant products would not be reduced sufficiently for the system to adjust the vector of production exactly to the vector of effectual demands -in this case, the processes in use would have to change in order to match exactly the vector of effectual demands. STEEDMAN'S "PoSITIVE PRoFITS WITH NEGATIVE SURPLUS-VALUE" PARADox Steedman (1975) seems to have taken this route and, by inverting the assumptions that Sraffa used to rule out processes with negative activity levels, produced his own particular example. The inconclusive results of the controversy sparked by his "positive profits with negative surplus value" example seem to have been due to the combination of two main factors.…”

“…The paradox of positive profits and negative surplus value provided by Steedman (1975) rests on the fact that negative levels of activity would be required if the bundles were to be produced separately -or, that these bundles can only be produced jointly within this square system. of course negative activity levels do not exist.…”

“…Krause (1980) argued that the different labour productivities are a case of heterogeneous labour and with this argument the author changes the weights of the direct labour vector in such way to guarantee strictly positive individual labour values. The obvious problem with this complicated solution is that the assumption of heterogeneous labour is simply not present in Steedman (1975). Flaschel (1983, p. 437) adds relative prices to the definition of individual labour value in order to get positive magnitudes for the latter.…”

“…oferecemos também uma forma de calcular a mais-valia de sistemas de produção conjunta que supera o problema e restabelece a proposição que afirma que trabalho excedente positivo é condição necessária para a existência de lucros positivos. PALAVRAS-CHAVE: mais-valia; valor-trabalho; taxa de lucro; produção conjunta.ABSTRACT: This paper explains the "positive profits with negative surplus-value" example of Steedman (1975) and shows that while in joint production systems individual labour values can be negative, the claim that the total labour embodied in the surplus product of the economy (surplus-value) can also be negative is based on assumptions that have no economic meaning (such as negative activity levels).The paper also provides a way to measure the surplus-value of joint production systems which overcomes the problems of the traditional concept and restates the proposition that a positive amount of surplus labour is a necessary condition for positive profits. …”

Going global: differential accumulation and the great U-turn in South Africa and Israel

“…In order to provide the "quantitative code" of accumulation, the labor process itself must be objective, quantifiable, and observable. Yet, as Marx himself anticipated and as the Cambridge Controversy was to later demonstrate, once we go beyond the most simple production processes these requirements no longer hold (Steedman, 1975(Steedman, , 1977Tsuru, 1993: Ch. 1).…”