while we're digging up old discussion topics, here's another: Marx's "labor theory of value."
My correspondent wrote: > I think that the very new concept of Ian Wright's Nonstandard Labour Values > ... could be seen as both plausible and convincing device to overcome some > problems derived from the transformation of labour values into prices of > production and also to avoid the problems derived from the redundancy and > inconsistency arguments... < My Comment: I'll look at this article, but I think that the so-called "transformation problem" is a snare and a delusion. So is Ricardo's issue of "an invariable measure of value." I don't think Marx's CAPITAL was about price theory except as an afterthought; that's why it appears only in volume III. He wasn't trying to show that prices could be reduced to values: I think that the deviation between prices and values is theoretically and ontologically just as important as their links with each other. For a somewhat formal understanding, see the attached paper. My ideas have evolved since then, but I think what I said in that article is basically right. See the second (unfinished) attached paper for more. [These are available by request. Please do not ask me via pen-l.] The key concept concerning price/value relationships is what Marx called the fetishism of commodities (or the "illusions created by competition" in volume III). The "transformation" of the famous "problem" refers to the way that the workings of capitalism necessarily cause deviations of prices from values and thus hide the social nature of production. That is, in reality (not just in math), capitalism makes prices deviate from values. Values refer to a system of accounting from the perspective of society as a whole, the entire community of workers. Prices refer to the system of accounting that individuals use when they operate within the system. They are connected, since (for an entire society) total value-added in price terms is proportional to total value-added in labor terms and total surplus-value in labor terms is proportional to total property income in price terms for society as a whole. Commodity-producing societies could not exist if workers did not produce commodities, while capitalism could not survive if workers did not produce more commodities than needed to reproduce their labor-power. But by their very nature, the values of almost all commodities differ from their prices. Under capitalism, Marx's simple "transformation" exercise indicates that values and prices would correspond only if there were no exploitation, all industries had the same technology, or there were no tendency for capitalists to seek higher profits by moving between sectors. We live in an alienated society, where we cannot see the social nature of production. There is no democratic community of workers, so that values are merely notional (a part of accounting), not real. The reality of capitalism is represented by prices. But they hide the underlying exploitative nature of the system. Marx revealed that nature by using the value accounting framework. (That does not mean, however, that we can't talk about exploitation in other terms.) -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
