Profits correlate with rents: "This is in good agreement with mesoeconomic theory which states that inequalties in profits are correlated to rents." - and if surplus value was co-related with rents we would be making some progress. Mark Blaug says Marx assumed surplus value was equal per man but gave no evidence for this. But one could make the argument surplus value is not necessarily equal per man but rather varies with location and in fact is more or less correlated with site or economic rent. It's also necessary to reformulate the labour theory of value in such a way as to avoid the trap that Ricardo set for Marx - a technically incorrect statement which opened the door to the kind of criticism that 'throws the baby out with the bathwater'. The issue is an analysis that comprises both exploitation and allocation. The concept of exploitation - whether chattel slavery or 'primitive accumulation', ie enclosure of land and resources into monopoly or ownership class control - is straighforward and should be susceptible to analysis and explanation. People don't seem to have had much trouble getting it to work on the ground using such simple tools as whips, chains, guns etc so why is it such a big problem to analyse and explain? Of course the answer to that is that some things really don't want to be explained....

Profits correlate with rents: "This is in good agreement with mesoeconomic theory which states that inequalties in profits are correlated to rents." - and if surplus value was co-related with rents we would be making some progress. Mark Blaug says Marx assumed surplus value was equal per man but gave no evidence for this. But one could make the argument surplus value is not necessarily equal per man but rather varies with location and in fact is more or less correlated with site or economic rent. It's also necessary to reformulate the labour theory of value in such a way as to avoid the trap that Ricardo set for Marx - a technically incorrect statement which opened the door to the kind of criticism that 'throws the baby out with the bathwater'. The issue is an analysis that comprises both exploitation and allocation. The concept of exploitation - whether chattel slavery or 'primitive accumulation', ie enclosure of land and resources into monopoly or ownership class control - is straighforward and should be susceptible to analysis and explanation. People don't seem to have had much trouble getting it to work on the ground using such simple tools as whips, chains, guns etc so why is it such a big problem to analyse and explain? Of course the answer to that is that some things really don't want to be explained....