On Jul 21, 2010, at 5:11 PM, Julio Huato wrote:
>
> Both value and prices are "real," in the sense that the content of
> both concepts is *objective* -- *socially* objective...
agreed
> ...Prices refer to the
> superficial appearance of same phenomenon...Prices are noise, value
> is signal...
But here I disagree. Marx emphasizes that the "signal" is the *difference* (which he says "admirably adapts the price form to a mode of production whose inherent laws impose themselves only as the mean of apparently lawless irregularities that compensate one another") between market price and value as terms of a dialectical process. That difference is the *signal* because it "signals" to the productive system whether or not the allocation of social labor time to the production of a particular type of commodity should be increased (price>value), decreased (price<value) or maintained (price=value). As Marx expressed in his famous letter to Dr. Kugelmann this is what the "law" of value is all about--it is the form in which that "law," which "cannot be done away with" no matter the social system, manifests itself under the capitalist mode of production. This price/ value dialectic determines the essentially dynamic nature of the market system and it is perfected, not done away with, by socialist markets during the epoch of transition between the capitalist and communist modes of production. That fact was well recognized by such Marxian economists as Otto Lange and Abba Lerner in the 1930's, but most self-styled Marxists seem to have forgotten it more recently.
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