I must be crazy to venture into the never ending "Jim and Gil debate". But I don't think that I can go on suffering this kind of vacuous arguments in the name of the Marxist defence against Roemerianism. Jim says: 7. Turning to the LoV specifically, I think the main question is "what in hell is the _purpose_ of the LoV?" If that question can be answered, maybe we can make some progress. _______________________ Forget about the puspose. What is LoV, by the way? Anyway, Jim goes on: _______________________ My view is that Marx's holism implies that unlike Ricardo's theory, Marx's Law of Value is NOT primarily a theory of prices in the sense of deriving individual prices from individual values. It's not a substitute for supply and demand, for example. Unlike modern microeconomists, price theory was extremely unimportant to Marx. ______________________ So, instead of leting us know what it is, we are told what it is not. So what it is not? (1) It is not Ricardo's theory, (2) it is not a theory of prices, and (3) it is not a sustitute for demand and supply--though we are not told whether demand and supply are point concepts or schedule concepts. Okay, we move on: ______________________ (As argued elsewhere, Marx's values depend on not just supply but demand. Prices and values are not independent of each other. A commodity has both a value and a price, both of which depend on supply and demand, but in different ways.) ______________________ Notice the proliferation of "not"--as if negativity is all that Marxist theory can offer. Anyway, above we were told that the LoV is not a substitute for "demand and supply". Now, we are told that it "*depends*" "*not*" only on supply but demand as well. So this animal LoV, which we don't know what it is, "depends" on "demand and supply". But of course we don't know how it depends on them and what kind of concepts these demand and supply are. Moreover, we are told that value and prices are not independent of each other. But we are not told how prices are determined and how prices and values are different but interdependent. Let's move on: _____________________ 8. The best way I've found for understanding the LoV and its purpose is to focus on the last section of vol. I of CAPITAL, the theory of _commodity fetishism_. That theory shows up in almost every chapter of the three volumes of CAPITAL. I would defy anyone to find a chapter of that book that doesn't refer to comm. fet. in one way or another, except perhaps some of the really fragmentary chapters of vol. II or III. (Here's a pen-l challenge!) ______________________ So the whole theory is now as clear as the day light! Is this you call a theoretical discourse Jim? If this is Marxist theory, then I'm not a Marxist nor do I wanna be one. ______________________ In these terms, Marx took Ricardo's "labor theory of long-run equilibrium prices" and transformed it radically. In terms of his historical vision, it makes total sense to examine society in terms of people creating society, in terms of labor. He _assumes_ that values equal prices (even though he knows this ain't so) in order to set up an accounting framework for understanding the hidden system. It seems crucial if we want to understand society to look at who is working and who isn't. In a nutshell, that's what the LoV is about. ______________________ So now we get it. LoV, though we don't know what it is still, is about to find out or "look at" who is working and who is not. From time immemorial people have known who is working and who is not without needing a LoV. The very relation of capital is defined on the basis that capitalists as personification of capital do not work or contribute labour in production. Why do you need LoV to find that out. Sorry Jim, rhetoric can only take you so far but not far enough. If this is what you have got as defence of LoV against Roemer and the Roemerians, then I would say let them live in peace. Cheers, ajit sinha ____________________ -- Jim Devine
