PEN-Lers,
I'm having a discussion on an anthropologhy listserv about the labor
theory of value and one wrote the following (below). (including the note
that J. Galbraith is advisor to Obama) Is it true? best, Brian
I'd say none of the major claims below is true. Specifically, (1) Ricardo
didn't have a labor theory of value, he had a prices-of-production theory
of value which reduces to a particular version of the labor theory of the
value [i.e., that equilibrium commodity price ratios = corresponding labor
value ratios] for the special cases that the rate of profit is zero or
capital intensities of production are equal across industries;
(2) If Sraffa "revived" anything, it would be this prices-of-production
theory of equilibrium commodity prices, which has been used by
neo-Ricardians to *criticize* the Marxian labor theory of value (see, e.g.,
Marx after Sraffa by Ian Steedman, or The Theory of Production by Kurz and
Salvadori); but FWIW neo-Ricardian theory is not generally considered part
of "conventional" economics, but a potential alternative to that brand of
economics;
and (3) Although I could be wrong about this, I don't think any of
Galbraith's work is based on the "Sraffa-influenced labor theory of value."
A quick survey of his (primarily empirical and policy-oriented) research
papers shows no reference to neoRicardian or labor value-theoretic concepts.
FWIW--
Gil
_______________________________________________________________________
The revival of the labor theory of value in conventional economics is
credited to
Piero Sraffa, 1898-1983.
The following is from the History of Economics website at the New
School: http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/
"The shy, Italian-born Sraffa was brought by John Maynard Keynes to
Cambridge in the 1920s. A close friend of the Italian revolutionary
Antonio Gramsci, Sraffa has been sometimes considered a "closet Marxian" -
and, apparently, he would sometimes be quite explicit about his loyalties
- although the 1920s England was not exactly welcoming to Marxian radicals.
Sraffa quickly became a fixture in the Cambridge world. He was part of the
legendary "cafeteria group" with Frank Ramsey and Ludwig Wittgenstein
which explored the 1921 probability treatise of J.M. Keynes. Sraffa ganged
up with Keynes to bury Friedrich Hayek in the business cycle debates.
Nonetheless, Sraffa's shyness in front of his students made lecturing a
hellish experience. Ever resourceful, Keynes arranged for Sraffa to be
appointed as a librarian of King's College and, to keep him busy, got the
Royal Society to hand over the task of editing a new collected edition of
David Ricardo 's works over to him. Sraffa's painstaking and meticulous
collecting and editing of Ricardo's works, begun in 1931, turned out to be
a 20-year-task! Although already in the printers in 1943, the
edition was delayed after the last-minute discovery of a trunk full of
Ricardo's papers in Ireland. Publication finally began (after Maurice
Dobb got on board as assistant) in 1953. It was a formidable edition. As
George Stigler was to put it later in his review, "Ricardo was a fortunate
man.. And now, 130 years after his death, he is as fortunate as ever : he
has been befriended by Sraffa." (Stigler, 1953). Sraffa's introduction to
the works was perhaps one of the most remarkable interpretations of the
tenets of Classical and Neoclassical theory in the history of economic
thought.
The outgrowth of these efforts was one of the longest-gestating works in
economic theory. Begun in the 1920s, Sraffa's Production of Commodities
by Means of Commodities, a terse, hundred-page text which finally emerged
in 1960. This book solved and restated Ricardo's theory [i.e. the labor
theory of value] for the moderns - inspiring the "Classical Revival"
spearheaded by the Neo-Ricardians at Cambridge and elsewhere in the 1960s
and 1970s."
[Anthropologist Joe's] notion of labor constructing "values in and of the
biophysical word" is of a different epistemological status than the
economic labor theory of value as conceived by Ricardo through Sraffa and
on to today. However, that is another discussion. I've always believed
that labor + energy/materials account for value - surplus or otherwise -
with technology placed within labor. Some within Ecological Economics have
worked on an energy theory of value - Bob Costanza comes to mind.
On a related note, I believe Jamie Galbraith at the U. of Texas and an
advisor to the Obama campaign is someone who incorporates the Sraffra
influenced labor theory of value into his economics.
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