value theory

[Michael McIntyre]

Sounds dubious to me.  I'll admit that I gave up on value theory a long time ago, but what does equilibrium analysis have to do with it, in any case? The problem is deriving price from value (not value from price as in Vol. III).  Until you can do that, you can't derive profit from surplus value, you can't really produce a value-based theory of the firm, arguments about the declining rate of profit go on hiatus or are reduced to vulgar empiricism, and so forth.  Where does a theory of partial or general equilibrium enter into this?

I hear a vague squishing sound.  Perhaps I've stepped in it this time....

Michael McIntyre


>>> dhenwood at panix.com 02/07/01 12:01PM >>>
From: "Drewk" <Andrew_Kliman at msn.com>

A "COPERNICAN REVOLUTION" IN MARXIAN VALUE THEORY?

Alan Freeman and Andrew Kliman

Thursday,  February 22, 2001, at 7:30 pm

Brecht Forum
122 West 27th Street, 10th floor (Manhattan)
Phone:  (212) 242-4201
www.brechtforum.org 

Sliding Scale:  $6 / $8 / $10

Value theory has frequently become an abstruse branch of "Marxian 
economics" that bears only a tenuous relation to the realities of 
capitalism. This situation arises, we suggest, because Marxian 
economists have become consumed by internal anomalies, the alleged 
"logical errors" of Marx's value theory that they have tried to 
resolve within the general equilibrium paradigm of orthodox 
economics. Yet by jettisoning the equilibrium paradigm, researchers 
from many nations have discovered that Marx's theoretical conclusions 
re-emerge, free from logical error. The concept of value once again 
reflects real-world processes of capitalist production, exchange, 
technological change, growth, and crisis. The new value theory offers 
an account of today's global economy that is coherent and arguably 
superior to orthodoxy.

Alan Freeman, co-editor of and contributor to _Marx and 
Non-equilibrium Economics_, teaches economics at the University of 
Greenwich (UK).

Andrew Kliman, a contributor to _Marx and Non-equilibrium Economics_, 
teaches economics at Pace University in Pleasantville, NY.