A footnote on value theory, but let's not get into this.

[Brad DeLong]

>>On Sun, May 12, 2002 at 12:45:44PM -0700, Brad DeLong wrote:
>>>  >>It's probably a good idea not to fetishize "value" as if it were
>>>  >>some substance that ethical action intends to maximize.
>>>  >
>>>  >No one thinks value is a substance.
>>>
>>>  Save Karl Marx, of course, who thought value was created by
>>>  "productive labor", and could not be created or destroyed--but only
>>>  transformed and transferred--thereafter...
>>>
>
>Brad, I'm no defender of value theory, but it should be attacked on 
>its merits, not on the basid of dumb misunderstandings. I hope you 
>don't purvey this rubbish to your students. In the first place, Marx 
>did not invent value theory. It was, until he capped it and (around 
>the same time) Walras and Jevons developed a credible subjectivist 
>approach, the mainstream approach to political economy, shared by 
>everyone since Petter, including those slouches Smith, Ricardo, and 
>Mill. It's hardly a stupid idea, however indefensible research 
>subsequent to marx may or may not have shown it to be today. Cheap 
>sneers are out of place.

I seem to have fallen into an Orwellian neverland: I had not known 
that there was anyone who denied that at some deep level Marx thought 
of value as a substance--something created by socially-necessary 
labor power, and thereafter preserved as commodities moved through 
the sphere of circulation (let's not get into the destruction of 
capital in crises).

Why else the extraordinary efforts to solve the "transformation 
problem"? Why else the insistence that the total amount of profits 
had to be equal to the total surplus values? Why the systematic 
denigration of the social value of all "unproductive labor"?

To call a basic point in history of thought a "cheap sneer" surprises me...

Brad DeLong