Professor Morishima on heterogeneous labour and Marxian value theory

Abstract

In our paper, 'The Marxian theory of value and heterogeneous labour' (1977), we have shown that the heterogeneity of the labour force in capitalist society is a necessary and integral aspect of the reproduction of capitalism. Hence the assumption of the reduci bility of heterogeneous labour to common labour is fatal to the labour theory of value. However, we have also shown that this reduction is unnecessary, and indeed in many cases occludes our understanding of social processes. Professor Morishima (1978) has taken issue with two aspects of our paper: its mathe matics and its economics. His comments on our mathematics are indeed helpful in rectifying certain deficiencies in our proofs, though they vitiate none of our theorems, nor do they alter any of the substantive propositions outlined at the end of the article and the beginning of the appendix. We are grateful for Morishima's criticism. By con trast, his comments on our economics constitute an attempt to defend a theoretical framework whose fundamental inadequacy we sought to demonstrate in our article. Consider first the mathematics. We shall show that, contrary to Morishima's asser tion, Lemma 6 is correct, and for this reason his objection to our Theorems 2 and 4 cannot be sustained. As Professor Morishima confirms in footnote 1 to his remarks on our paper, his counter-example to Lemma 6 violates one of the conditions of the model—namely the 'condition of reproducibility', FT^O, expressed in equation (1) on page 186 of the original article. Indeed, the data used in Morishoma's attempted counter-example together with F7&0 imply a rather severe restriction on the values of x. For values of x such that x2/x1 = 9, and only for these values, F is non-negative (indeed F1 = F2 = 0). The reader may readily confirm that for these values of x, a, and tr2 are both zero. Thus Lemma 6 is not contradicted. Indeed, Morishima concedes this point in his footnote 1. Morishima is correct, however, in noting that Lemma 6 is incorrectly proved. In particular, the assumption that F>0 is nowhere employed. The correct proof is as follows :