Date: Wed, 3 Aug 1994 13:33:09 +0700 From: djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu (donna jones) Subject: on the LTV It does not seem to me that Marx's theory of value is really fundamentally a theory of relative prices. I just wanted to indicate some of other facets of Marx's theory of value. 1. Marx's theory of value is a critique of the Liberal ideal of property, freedom, equality and Bentham. It discloses the terror (exploitation)immanent in these ideals. See patrick murray's marx's theory of scientific knowledge where Marx's theory of value is brilliantly compared to Hegel's section "Absolute Terror" in the Phenomenology. Wasn't it Robertus who proclaimed marx to be the greatest enemy of (bourgeois) civilization? 2.marx's theory of value brings out his critique of fetishism in many ways. Marx wanted to explain why equal capitals, with different organic compositions (that is, different labor contents), could still receive an average rate of profit based on the law of value--that unresolable problem leading to the disintegration of the school based on *Ricardo's* theory of value. Capital itself seems to be the source of value. Marx's critique not only shows how this is possible (in fact necessary under capitalism) but also brings out what this says about capitalism as a social system. I.e. value is "the form in which class power over social labor is accumulated." See Paul Mattick Jr's inexusably ignored paper in the International Journal of Political Economy, 1991-1992. As I have mentioned before by laying bare the operation of the price mechanism itself, Carchedi has critiqued the fetishism of dead labor, i.e. why new fixed capital itself seems to be source of extra-value. In other words, Marx's theory of value is the scientific completion of the Ricardian socialist Hodgskin's eloquent denial that fixed capital was productive: "One is almost tempted to believe that capital is a short of cabalistic word, like Church or State, or any other of the general terms which are invented by those who fleece the rest of mankind to conceal the hand that shears them. It is a sort of idol before which men are called upon to prostrate themselves, while the cunning priest from behind the altar,profaning the God whom he pretends to serve, and mocking those sweet sentiments of devotion and gratitude, or those terribel emotions of fear and resentment, one or the other of which seems commond to the whole human race, as they are enlightened or wise or ignorant or debased,puts forth his hand to receive and appropriate the offererings which he calls for in the name of religion...The skill and the art of the laborer have been overlooked, and he has been vilified; while the work of his hands has been worshipped. (Quoted in Sydney Coontz, 1966. Productive Labor) 3. Marx's theory of value is a theory of unequal exchange. It is a theory not only of the production of value but its unequal distribution. ThirdWorldism can thus not be simply written of as a deviation: it derives directly from Marx's theory of value. Again Carchedi's treatment is excellent (though in my opinion imperialism is a more multi-faceted economic phenomena than he develops--more on this later). 4. Marx's theory of value is a critique, a reversal of the neo- and post-captialist theorists who claim that capitalism by quantitative increases in accumulation can lose its quality of exploitation which was only essential in the days of Engel's Manchester working class. From Wm Ash's 1963 Marxism and Moral Concepts: "SV, the appropriation through ownership of the means of production of the difference between the goods produced and the goods consumed by the working force, a difference that increased with a rise in productivity so that human progress itself can be measured by the degree of exploitation, simpy IS the law of capitalism. Capitalism cannot change unless this basic economic law of the appropriation of surplus value has changed; and any claim that capitalism is gradually turning into something else, as long as this law may still be observed in operation, is merely terminological quibbling." Take note Peter Drucker! 5. And finally Marx's theory of value is a theory of the dynamics of capitalism. It is a theory of dynamics based on the contradictory nature of labor itself under capitalism: the inverse movement of use-value and value, the contradictions of concrete labor and value-positing labor. Marx termed this basis of the critical concept. To argue that Marx's theory of value is a description of a static system is, quite frankly, a travesty, given that in the preface to capital, he clearly states that his intention is to lay bare the law of motion of capitalism. I think that Grossmann's treatment of the Marxian theory of dynamics based on the law of value remains unsurpassed. The two part article was translated in Capital and Class in 1977. Such an interpretation was defended by Paul Mattick, Sr. in his last book. 6. And finally, finally we may want to ask how Marx's theory of value can explain the role of (unpaid) housework. I have not tried to prove anything here. I am not quite at the level where I could do this. It just seemed to me that Marx's theory of value is quite rich, and perhaps we need to begin by asking whether we are finding weaknesses in Ricardo's theory of value or Marx's and what it is the latter sought to explain. d jones
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