A footnote on value theory, but let's not get into this. "Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com> Subject: Re:
>
>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.
^^^^^^^^^
CB: Actually,I think Marx's exact formulation with the terms "value" and "substance" is in the heading of the first page of _Capital_, Use-value is the substance of value.
SECTION 1 THE TWO FACTORS OF A COMMODITY: USE-VALUE AND VALUE (THE SUBSTANCE OF VALUE AND THE MAGNITUDE OF VALUE)
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The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as "an immense accumulation of commodities," [1] its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
CB: Then he refers to "social substance"
Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labour, of labour-power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour-power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are ― Values.