On Nov 5, 2010, at 9:27 AM, D. T. Cochrane wrote:
> ...observable financial quantities cannot be explained by
> some other unobservable quantities, abstract labour-time in the case
> of the
> LToV...
Marx (unlike Smith and Ricardo) does *not* have a "labor theory of value"--for Marx abstract labor-time plays no role at all in price determination either in a static competitive-equilibrium model ("prices of production") or in the real world of oligopoly. It would be better to say , after some attempt at philosophical understanding, that Marx has a "value theory of labor." In any case, it is just plain false to assert that, in Marx, abstract-labor-time is an "unobservable" quantity. The quantity of abstract-labor-time performed annually in a capitalist economy is the sum total of hours worked by productive workers in the course of the year--a totally observable quantity. But if they think financial quantities are in any way "observable" they must be the only "economists" in the world never to have heard of "shadow banks" and the only "Marxists" never to have heard of fictitious capital.
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