On Jul 20, 2010, at 3:28 PM, Angelus Novus wrote:
> ... "value" is not an empirically existing physical magnitude; it's
> the form assumed by social labour in a capitalist [economy]...
>
If he had any understanding of what is meant by "the form assumed by
social labour" he would not have inverted the whole theory by writing:
> ...The transformation of "value" into "production prices" is
> literally meaningless...
>
Because for Marxian theory there is no such problem as the
transformation of value into production prices: the problematic with
which Marxian theory is here concerned is the transformation of
*production prices* (the relative prices at which commodities exchange
in the general equilibrium of a perfectly competitive commodity-
producing economy) into *value* (the aggregate hours of human energy
expended by productive laborers in forming the newly-created wealth
allocated by society in its alienated state to the central economic
functions of simple and expanded reproduction of the labor force and
the stock of productive resources) and, under capitalism, the
formation of the capital *values* that as past ("dead") labor
determine the concrete, quantitative, relations under which human
("living") labor is exploited by the capitalist ruling classes in
their various (private and statified) forms.
The problematic of quantitative equivalence of "values" and "prices" is central to Marxian political economy because if values cannot be quantified, quantitatively specified, then economic science is impossible and the Marxian claim to formulate the *laws* of motion of capitalist society collapses.
Shane Mage
"All things are an equal exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods are for gold and gold for goods."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr, 90