Charles, I'm not in the least bit disturbed by whether Carrol is Marxist or anti-Marxist... he can make perfectly valid points also from his perspective, why not?
What I meant is simply that Sombart defined Marx's theory of value as an "objective" (or objectivist) theory of value, a point of view accepted by Bukharin and subsequent authors. This does I think an injustice to Marx who clearly aimed to explain in Das Kapital both the objective reality of value relationships, the way they are subjectively perceived, and how the two are related. That is Marx was very aware that value has both an objective and a subjective dimension. The value proportions between tradeable objects can be considered objective, but the relationship between human actors and those objects is partly subjective. Von Bortciewicz I think paved the way for an assimilation of Marx's theory to equilibrium economics and the accounting point of view. Again this does an injustice to Marx, I think, since (1) Marx never seriously subscribed to a "natural tendency of markets to approximate equilibrium" beyond acknowledging that supply and demand will tend to adjust to each other, and since (2) Marx knew very well that no perfect mesh between value relationships and price relationships ever existed in aggregate (of a type which could be described as an accounting consolidation). For many economists, the concept of "price" is simply a number expressing a quantity of money, which can go either up or down, but in reality there is much more to it. If US GDP (total factor income) is $14.6 trillion and compensation of employees is $8 trillion (in round figures), so that direct compensation of employees itself is 55% of GDP, then of course there is always going to be a "strong correlation" between labour hours employed and factor income, irrespective of what economic theory is held. As long as salary income is determined by time worked, and net output equals factor income, there will be a strong correlation between labour hours and output values. I agree the capitalist economy and infrastructure is "intentional design" (even if purposeful action also has unintended effects), and that is why I don't have much faith in technocratic "laws of chaos" theories. Things look random, only because things are viewed from a certain perspective, a perspective from which it is impossible to tell why the distribution of observations is shaped like it is, or how this distribution was produced in the first place. The intentional design can be understood, only if the historical origins and contexts are known. In the Farjoun/Machover theory, a social system is metaphorically described as being the same as a physical system, in which a disturbance of equilibrium is counteracted by compensating factors which restore equilibrium. The "dynamic" of the system then consists of its tendency to reach constancy. But this theory exists only in the stochastic imagination, it has almost nothing to do with the real world; the definition of equilibrium relies on certain superabstractions which stay constant. The theory claims "scientific" status because qualities are reduced to numerical distributions, the patterns of which can be analysed with the aid of probability theory for their possible determinacy. But the exercise takes place at such an astronomic level of abstraction that there is almost no connection between the numbers and the real experience to which they supposedly refer, nor is there any serious reflection about the procedural assumptions involved in the reduction of qualities to quantities. I think Paul Cockshott is quite correct in his claim that ultimately marginalist theory is a matter of definition, and not testable and falsifiable. The LTV is testable, because we can test the observable relationships between labour-time and economic exchange. But the tests which Paul has in mind are rather weak tests in my view. Marx himself already implied that it is impossible to prove "scientifically" or logically that any particular concept of economic value is true or false. At most we can say that (1) it has more or less predictive and explanatory power, i.e. that a concept of value proves itself by the coherent understanding it makes possible (2) that economic theorizing always assumes a concept of value, whether this is made explicit or not. Jurriaan ----- Original Message ----- From: "c b" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 4:52 PM Subject: [Pen-l] Explain to a non-economist what Marginal Cost is > Jurriaan, > > This is response to Carrol's typical-anti-Marxist > nonsense-pretending-to-be-Marxist is spot on. > > I would suggest that here - " The 20th century history of Marxist > economics offers us a sad spectacle. > First, Marxists volunteered for an intellectual lobotomy by epistemologist > Werner Sombart, apologist Nikolai Bukharin and accountant Ladislaus von > Bortciewicz. Then, after a long and largely pointless mathematical > detour..." - you substitute "some Marxist economics in the 20th > Century" . I mean Lenin and a lot of other important Marxist > economists of the 20th Century did nothing of the kind. > > Charles > > > > > > From: "Jurriaan Bendien" > > Carrol, just a brief comment: > > Marx himself never argued that commodity values have to be "converted" > into > prices. This would be meaningless nonsense, since a commodity always has > both a price and a value at the same time, and the critical factor in > competition is precisely - as Marx indicated at the very beginning of > Capital Vol. 3 - whether in fact the commodity can sell below its value or > above its value, and realise a good profit at the same time. > > The "transformation of commodity values into prices of production" just > means, that the regulation of the exchange of commodities directly > according > to product-values (quantities of labour-time) changes into the regulation > of > the exchange of commodities according to their prices of production. > > This theoretical transformation mirrors the historical transition from > simple commodity production - where the producer compares how much he can > get in return for his own product and his own labour time - to capitalist > production, where what counts is comparative capital yields, i.e. the > price > at which products would have to sell, in order to obtain a normal profit > rate on the capital invested in their production - assuming given cost > prices for output, ruling market prices and ruling profit margins (for > some > useful historical insights, see Robert Lopez, "The trade of medieval > Europe", Cambridge Economic History of Europe Vol. 2, 1952, pp. 334f.). > > -clip- > _______________________________________________ > pen-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l > _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
