Fixed Capital as a Joint Product

Since the Reswitching Debate the point has become familiar that the means of production in a capitalist society represent different ‘quantities of capital’ depending on the prevailing rate of profit. But because these discussions were about a critique of the neoclassical theory of value and distribution and not about a new comprehensive theory of capital, they have been conducted either in terms of circulating capital without machines or in terms of production by means of one machine at different ages (cf. Hicks, 1970, Nuti, 1970). Although von Neumann and Sraffa revived the ‘old classical idea’ (Sraffa) of treating what is left at the end of the year’s process of production as an economically different good from the one which entered the process, very few1 have tried to construct models with several fixed capital goods which are explicitly distinguished from other kinds of joint products.