The point of the LTOV is to show how
> exploitation can be measured at the level of the system as a whole.
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One can no more measure exploitation with the ltov in a non-tautological manner than one can meaure the rate of beauty using general relativity theory. Exploitation is a normative concept.
It is a
> general theory of price formation not a micro-theory of price selection (for
> that, Marx thought classical and perhaps would have thought neoclassical
> theory was just fine i.e., at the level of the individual subjective
> evaluation of alternative choices which are related to market prices
> established via the forces of supply and demand).
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There's not a shred of evidence that the concept of exploitation is needed for a theory of price formation.
To defeat the LTOV one
> needs to demonstrate that capitalism is -not- a system of exploitation, by
> which it is meant that one class in virtue of their control over the bulk of
> societies productive assets does not control and appropriate the labour and
> creativity of those who have -in the main- only their labour power to sell.
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One can easily use the concept of exploitation as an indispensable concept in a theory that critiques capitalism without referring in any way to price formation and dynamics. Justin and others have written plenty on that front. Exploitation is a social relation constituted via property and contract law; it is a political contest as to whether the rules of the capitalist game can be transformed. There is no epistemic/explanatory necessity in invoking the term exploitation when analyzing price formation at the point of production. Prices are surface phenomena and all that..........Oh, and Ockam's razor too...........
> The LTOV simply attempts to allow some approximate quantification of that
> appropriation. To remark that there are normative dimensions to this
> project is simply make a trivially true observation that can in no way
> vitiate its claim to objectivity.
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This is just a question begging attempt to ward off all criticism of the failing of the ltv as it relates to conflating the normative with the causal [dynamics of price formation].
Just as to remark on the normative
> dimensions of the neoclassical project since its inception, which any
> cursory glance at the history of the development of economic thought will
> show, does not in and of itself vitiate the neoclassical claim to
> objectivity or a science. The best one can do is show that for certain
> questions the normative dimensions of a project shut down or make the
> research program blind to certain phenomena. For example, if one is found
> of assuming the initial endowment- as my neoclassical friends are- it is an
> implicit claim that the present distribution of wealth is just and an
> explcit claim that any attempt to alter it is both non-Pareto optimal and
> inefficient. Notice that the critical silence entailed here is rather
> devastating but the neoclassical claim that it is objectively true that a
> redistribution of wealth would be non-Pareto optimal and inefficient may be
> correct when viewed through that lens. What Marx, and Marxists purport to
> demonstrate via deployment of the LTOV is what structures and allows for the
> reproduction of the hierarchical class divided reality of capitalist
> societies. The LTOV is integral to making the link between the phenomenal
> quantities of capitalist societies (eg profits, wages, productivity) and the
> conditions of possibility for those phenomenal forms (eg the social
> relations which supply the necessary and sufficient conditions for the
> phenomenal forms).
--------------------------------
Then the ltv should have had an enormous apparatus for understanding the law in a non-question begging way that parses the ideology/objectivity issue; again, Justin has written on this score as well. The ltv, of course, does no such thing.
> On a different note it is simply not true that the LTOV does a poor job at
> measuring and explaining empirical macroeconomic phenomena (see for example
> Shaikh http://homepage.newschool.edu/~AShaikh/labthvalue.pdf). Quite a part
> from whether or not you, Doug or Andy find it useful for the work you do is
> another matter. I suspect that given the work Andie does the LTOV has no
> particular use as Andie's project is about justice within the normative
> dimensions of liberal theory as to what is or is not fair. Exploitation
> within liberalism is only about policing exceptional behaviour vis-a-vis
> liberal norms not about undoing the normative foundations of liberal
> justice. And to get outside of the prison house of liberalism as the only
> normative benchmark one needs an alternative theory not just of how prices
> are formed but also, and most importantly, of what the normative basis of
> liberal societies are founded upon. What a remarkable contribution the LTOV
> makes in this regard.
>
> Travis
---------------------------------
Read the paper and am not convinced, any more than folks like Steedman, Mongiovi, Nitzan or Robinson [if she were alive] are convinced. If you want to understand how prices are formed at the point of production, go work for MSoft, Boeing, BMW, Toyota, Moody's or Charles Schwab; do the empirical work. Feel free to take all the great monographs with you; you know, Pasinetti, Foley, Steedman, Shaikh, Kurz and Salvadori........Oh, and check the archives for a paper on Marxism and accounting which Doug posted a while back too.............
Liberal norms were forged in class struggle and violence against Feudal institutions; they were great rationalizations of and for their time, alot of them still are. Unfortunately, a lot of feudal norms are still with us as well................