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

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Sun May 12 20:12:13 PDT 2002



>
>Brad DeLong wrote:
>
> > 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).
> >

Brad, I am not an expert in value theory--ask jim Devine or someone who has devoted decades to thinbking about it--but I have never read a Marxists who thought that value was a substance. It's ABC of Marxist economics that it is a relation. I am astounded that you didn't know this. The proposition is not really debateable; it's like arguing that Descartes is a dualist.


> > Why else the extraordinary efforts to solve the "transformation
> > problem"?

Because (on my reading anyway) he wants an explanation of prices, but he has an argument taht values diverge from prices. Do you think that prices are a substance too?


>Why else the insistence that the total amount of profits
> > had to be equal to the total surplus values?

Because he wants to say that all profit is due to exploitation.

Why the systematic
> > denigration of the social value of all "unproductive labor"?

There's no such thing in Marx.


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

Well, it's not a cheap sneer, then, but it is a fundamental confusion. Really, Brad, I am surprised. This is very elementary stuff. I'm not a fan if value theory,a s I say, but you're not in a s position to criticise it until you begin to see what everyone who is talking about it, from Marx on down, agrees on.

jks

_________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list