>The answer then become: 'The value of labour-power is equal to the value
>of the subsistence goods necessary for the maintenance and reproduction
>of labour-power' -- and _its_ question is produced as follows: 'what is
>the value of labour-power?'." - Althusser, _Reading Capital_.
Angela.
Whatever light Althusser here throws on Marx's critique of classical economics (and honestly I have trouble following him), Marx remains open here to one of Ian Steedman's major criticisms (the other being the problem of joint production), nicely summarized in his own way by David Gordon in Resurrecting Marx (transaction, 1990):
"According to Marx's account, wages (and hence surplus value) depend on the commodities required to sustain the laborer. To simplify, imagine that laborers need only bread to survive. Then, according to Marx, wages depend on howmuch bread the workers require.
"An ambiguity lies concealed in the phrase 'how much.' Does this mean how much in value terms, or in physical terms? That is to say, is the question at issue what quantity of bread the worker needs--or is it, rather, what the value of this quantity is? Marx took the question in the second way. The value of wages, in his view, depends on the value of the bread the worker needs.
"Steedman's objection is that once the physical quantity of bread at issue is given, this suffices to determine wages (and hence profits). The value of bread 'drops out' of the picture altogether: no recourse to it is necessary in order to explain wages.
"Steedman proves this through the presentation of a simple model, which he later complicates. At first, for example, he assumes that only one technique of production is necessary; later, he allows choice of technique. Although Steedman's argument does not require very difficult mathematics, I do not think I have a sufficient grip on it to try to explain his reasoning in detail. Rather I shall attempt to present the basic point of his argument in my own way. "If wages depend on teh value of bread, then we obviously need to know that value. But bread, like all other commodities, is subject to the labor theory of vlaue, in Marx's view. To determine the value of bread, one needs to determine the value of the labor that produces bread. But the wages of bread produces, like all other wages, depend on the value on the value of labor power. This in turn depends on the value of bread, in the way earlier explained.
"The circularity here is apparent. Before one can determine the value of labor power, one needs to know the value of bread, a value that in turn depends on the value of labor power. Unless one can break out of the circle, the labor theory's explanation of wages and profit fails.
"Steedman himself favored substituting a theory advanced by Sraffa...for the standard Marxist labor theory. This system, like Marx's, relies on an objective measure of value, but uses a commodity other than labo ras the unit of calculation (Sraffa's actual choice was corn--in American usage, grain). In Sraffa's system, labor's wasge is not fixed by the cost of production of the goods needed the 'produce' the laborer. Indeed, nothing within Sraffa's system fixes wages. They are an 'exogeneous variable' which so far as the system is concerned is abitrary.
"In Steedman's analysis of Marx, wage rates are indeed determined. However, this comes about only because Steedman assumes with Marx that the vlaue of labor pwoer depends on the bread needed by the laborer. Marx's argument for this depends on part of the labor theory tha tSteedman has rejected: the VALUE of labor pwoer is determiend by the the VALUE of the bread required to produce the laborer. Having rejected this, Steedman needs to provide another argument for the conclusion that wages are fixed by the physical quantities of goods required. He does show, I am right, that GIVEN that wages are so determined, an explanation of wages and profits is available. But he does not argue that wages are fixed in this way."
yours, rakesh