AN quoting me: "That Marx was able to develop his critique of political-economy as he learned more about how the complexities of the system operated historically and were developing as he was alive. Obviously, Marx didn't repudiate the labour theory of value."
AN: It should be noted that Marx's "labour theory of value" is **not** the "labour theory of value" of the classical economists. ********** MB: Certainly Marx is criticising Ricardo, Smith and so on for not attributing value to applied socially necessary labour time e.g. Smith's 'labouring cattle'. ************* AN: What is key is Marx's historically situating the commodity form of human labor as specific to the capitalist mode of production. ************ MB: I think you mean 'labour power sold over time'. Human labour was a commodity long before the capitalist mode of production based on wage-labour became the dominant mode of producing wealth, since slaves were commodities bought and sold in the marketplace. ********** AN: The generalization of the commodity form necessitates the universal equivalent, money, in order to make concrete acts of labor commensurable with one another. This is the key to Marx's category of "abstract labor". *********** MB: Money existed before capitalism became the general mode of production. But, I believe I see what you mean in the development of credit on a mass scale. ******************* AN: Michael Heinrich, borrowing a term from Hans-Georg Backhaus, uses the term "monetary theory of value" to distinguish between Marx's value theory and that of Smith and Ricardo. *********** MB: I can't see how money can produce exchange-value, unless we're talking about fictitious value/credit. I can only see money as expressing or representing value created by labour. Please explain. **************** AN:This was also key to Marx's polemic with Proudhon: Proudhon wanted to abolish money while retaining commodities. Marx pointed out that commodities require money in order to be exchanged. Socially necessary labor time cannot be measured with a stop watch; it has to be measured ex post facto in exchange by the amount of money it brings in. ************ MB: I generally agree with AN here above. Interestingly, Proudhon also proclaimed the necessity for socialism to have an equality of wages. Wages, commodity production and exchange, a peoples' bank...iow...a more or less egalitarian form of capitalism would, of course, require a strong political State to maintain, as I think has been demonstrated in the history of the 20th century. As far as the 'labour theory of value' goes, I'm not sure whether Marx used that exact conceptual formulation. Sorry about that; it's become a kind of commonplace. I suppose I could Google around and see; but it seems that others have already done that fact check work. However, I think that Marx is pretty clear about where wealth comes from whether is represented in 'interest', 'rent', 'profit', the money commodity, 'price' or 'surplus value': crystalised socially necessary labour time and nature (aka natural resources). Mike B) Mike B) *********************************************************************** Wobbly Times http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com/ _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
