File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9706, message 98


Date: Tue, 17 Jun 1997 21:27:56 +0100
From: Lew <Lew-AT-dialogues.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-TH: LOV specific to capitalism?


In article <199706162256.WAA03728-AT-gn.apc.org>, Chris Burford
<cburford-AT-gn.apc.org> writes
>While I think Lew and I have exchanged differences 
>elsewhere about reforms, I have little doubt that
>he is a shrewd debater of the marxist texts.
>
>I note that near the beginning of the latest 
>thread about value which developed into the 
>interesting exchange between Jerry and Doug, 
>Lew stated on 26th May:
>
>"The
>economic law of capitalism, Marx's law of value, is in fact quite
>specific to capitalism."
>
>
>
>
>Now Engel's in the "LAW OF VALUE AND RATE OF PROFIT" 1895
>published as an addendum to volume III of capital 
>wrote:
>
>"Thus, the
>Marxian law of value has general economic validity for a period lasting
>from the beginning of exchange, which transforms products into
>commodities, down to the 15th century of the present era."
>
>In the same article he says: " the
>law of value has prevailed during a period of from five to seven
>thousand years"
>
>
>No one challenged Lew at the time, and I presume
>his statement did not stick in anyones eye so it may have been
>accepted by a number of people as an uncontroversial
>marxist statement. I raise this now not
>really to point score, but I would be interested in 
>how Lew, and others, think we should think about this 
>discrepancy. 
>
>Comments?

Rakesh has made some good points. All I would add is that Marx and
Engels argued that in pre-capitalist simple commodity production, prices
are directly related to values. So, for example, a reduction of labour
time will directly reduce price. This is consistent with the "general
economic validity" of Marx's labour theory of value, but is not the same
thing as Marx's law of value. Marx and Engels' analysis of simple
commodity production in this respect was not original and was widely
accepted among bourgeois economists; it is only as an explanation of the
economic law of motion of capitalist society that the law of value
appears.

What is that law of value? If value is defined as the objectification of
abstract labour, then the law of value is the determination of the
magnitude of value by socially necessary labour time. 
-- 
Lew


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