[lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification)

Lakshmi Rhone lakshmirhone at gmail.com
Mon Feb 15 10:46:52 PST 2010


On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 10:26 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:


> Lakshmi:
> My feeling is that your understanding of the labor theory of value is not
> engaged with Marx's.
> Marx's labor theory of value is not subjective, nor an aggregation of
> subjective estimations.
>

I don't understand that. If people are not valuing goods comparatively in terms of their labor costs, then how can the labor theory of value have any truth? The labor value of the good does not reside in it apart from the meaning that we give to it through our valuations, resulting in the wisdom of the crowd as to the relative objective labor costs of goods. So there is a dialectic between subjective and objective factors.


> Your approach appears to be based on an analysis that stops with exchange
> value, where the exchange value of any commodity is determined by the
> inter-subjective nature of barter or barter-like exchange.

Well in exchange we look to production. If you can't deceive me and I have good information, I know that it took you about two days to get that deer (not four or five) and me only one day to get the beaver, so we understand that I must give you two beavers for a deer. But the whole exchange is mediated through subjective valuations even if it based on objective costs.


> Marx uses this
> approach to describe exchange under pre-capitalist systems but, quite
> properly, sees the alienation of producers from the means of production,
> from control of the relations of production, from other laborers, from
> their
> prior communities and extended families and from the product radically
> transforms the nature of production and exchange such that an abstraction,
> Value - not use-value and not exchange-value - determines the value (if not
> the exact price) of any particular good.

Value determines value--did you mean to say that?

LR


> This took Marx most all of Volume
> I of Capital to lay out and was subsequently extended in Volume II and the
> incomplete Volume III and the never initiated other two or three intended
> volumes.
> If you are interested in this stuff, that's where I'd start... doing so
> will
> change your understanding of the labor theory of value (but still not
> provide you completeness, as Marx didn't intend it to given the ongoing
> acceleration of the expanded reproduction of capital and the attendant
> changes in ecological, personal, communal, political and economic
> conditions.
> Alan
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 1:12 PM, Lakshmi Rhone <lakshmirhone at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > Alan
> > You're right that there is all this work on behavioral economics. I don't
> > know what to make of it. I was only making the simple point that I
> > understand the labor theory of value
> > as a theory of how people value goods or give meaning to goods in the
> > marketplace. So I think it's a subjective theory--or at least a theory of
> > aggregated subjective estimations of objective costs-- and I think people
> > can't but value judgments without relative judgments or comparisons. That
> > is, I figure out how much a hand woven sweater is worth by guessing how
> > much
> > more time went into it as compared to a machine produced one. If I didn't
> > ask that question, I don't know how I would make my own value judgments.
> > That people are making such valuations seems beyond obvious but that
> seems
> > to be hugely controversial among economists. So I am willing to say that
> > there is some truth to the labor theory of value for a lot of goods, but
> > it's obviously not a complete theory. And even if it's approximately
> > correct, I don't see what it has to do with making society socially just.
> > Do
> > we need economics? I think most people have already figured out that we
> > don't need economists!
> > LR
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
>
>
> --
> *********************************************************
> Alan P. Rudy
> Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
> Central Michigan University
> 124 Anspach Hall
> Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
> 517-881-6319
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>



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