Value: a simple challenge I found Jim Devine's posts [PEN-L 2305;9 Jan,PEN-L 2323/4:11 Jan] thought-provoking and agreed with much of them. I haven't been taking part in what seems an interesting PKT discussion and didn't go to the ASSA. But the discussion with Gil is not new to me so I hope no-one objects to my horning in. I pose a simple question: (i) does value exist? Is there such a thing? If participants in this discussion could say where there is agreement or disagreement on this simple question maybe we could get onto a more substantive discussion: (ii) what is it? what are its axioms? or, if they think it doesn't exist (iii) what can we do without it? I found major disagreement with only one of Jim's main conclusions which, I think, does not flow from the rest of the argument: ============================================================ "In sum, I think that the phrase "theory of value" should be dropped -- unless an author is very clear what he or she means by it." ============================================================ But this seems to me more like an argument that an author ought to make very clear what he or she means. If they won't, aren't we entitled to conclude that the confusion lies with them rather than the concept? Why give up on a good concept just because its users abuse it? After all, just because the concept of socialism or democracy are used in many and sometimes confused ways, we don't conclude that they should be dropped. I suspect the debate is clouded because 'theory of value' is seen as synonymous with Marx: criticising Marx can be an easy way out of defining one's own terminology in its own right. My impression is that for some writers - certainly I have this feeling about what Gil has been saying - the real target is not particularly Marx's concept of value but any concept of value at all. I could be wrong, but in that case a little clarity would go a long way. If value itself is to go - this proposal is made seriously, not to hold any project up to ridicule - what should be done is to show how the whole of economics, not just one or two parts, can be reconstructed without the concept of value or any conceptual equivalent. But then we should settle accounts not with Marx, but the rest of the economics profession. Marx isn't responsible for the concept of value: all economists use it. All poor Marx does is examine the concept rigorously. Why single him out? His critics (Bohm-Bawerk,Bortkiewicz, Dmitriev, Tugan etc) and the alternatives (Walras, Debreu, etc etc etc) all use the term. What they dispute is not whether it exists, but what it is. Moreover all practical economists in fact use a notion of 'something' independent of price which is in some sense the subject of economic activity. Whether one uses the V-word or not, this is value: a general abstract 'something' which one buys with money yet is not money. Some call it 'purchasing power' and some call it 'product at constant prices', but the idea is the same. Joan Robinson's fundamental point that before you can talk about price you must talk about 'what' you get for your money remains perfectly valid and you don't get out of this problem by singling out Marx for attack. Consider the distinction between the goods market and the money market. What is the aggregator of goods? If it is money, one cannot even make the distinction between the two markets. But if it is not, what is it? In the Quantity of Money equation MV=PT, what are the units of T? First-year students begin their essays on inflation with the words 'inflation is a general rise in all prices, that is, a fall in the value of money'. They get this from neoclassical textbooks, not 'Zur Kritik'. The problem with merely scrapping the V-word is that the concept is there, whether or not you use the word. I think you can only justify using another word if it makes matters clearer, which means it would have to make distinctions sharper, rather than blurring them. I am convinced that 'Value' is to political economy what 'space, time and energy' are to physics: you just can't say anything coherent without them. I certainly can't discuss the practical questions I need to deal with, without it. I can't explain what it means to say one country is poorer than another. I can't discuss how a price rise makes some people better off and other people worse off. I can't separate real profit from speculative profit. I can't explain what inflation is, or differentiate between a rise in productivity and a rise in prices. I can't define the real rate of interest. *What* do capitalists compete for? Not a physical surplus: this doesn't exist. [see PEN-L 26, 11 July] And so on and so on. I could be disproved if someone can show me how to talk about inflation, inequality, productivity, unequal exchange, crisis capitalist competition, the profit rate, without using the V-word or a conceptual equivalent. The only thing I can find which anyone has managed to discuss without using a concept equivalent to value is exploitation. I would personally be very glad if capitalism was nothing but exploitation. Then at least we wouldn't have to worry about crisis, war, uneven development, mass poverty, racism, accumulation, inflation, and a few other minor inconveniences. But the theoretical assumptions needed to discuss even exploitation without value can easily be shown to be contradictory and at variance with real life (for example you can have positive profits with a negative physical surplus) Let's have a level playing field: either we do away with the concept altogether (and justify doing so rigorously) or we recognise the minimum duty to define the concepts we use. Fruitful interparadigmatic discussion [Jim PEN-L 2324] will happen if participants recognise that value exists, study their own use of it, and then debate around what it is, how it is measured, how it is produced and how it is transferred from one capital or individual to another. This can be done with, or without, reference to Marx. It sounds as if that might have been what the Randall Wray discussion was about and if so, I'm sorry I missed it. And let's hear it from Gil: is there such a thing as value? Alan Freeman
