>>> Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 06/13/00 11:45AM >>>
>>Michael Perelman wrote:
>>>Jim also mentioned that wages are falling relative to labor
>>>productivity. I associate this trend with intellectual property as
>>>well. Labor productivity increases with the ability to mark goods up --
>>>Nike shoes are an excellent example, but the same holds for Microsoft software.
Doug writes:
>>Any sense of how representative these sorts of goods are? I'd guess that
>>gains from IP are merely redistributions of SV - it can't explain an
>>increase in the profit rate in the macroecomy. Nike's gain is some other
>>capitalist's loss, no?
Brad quotes that well-known expert on political economy, the unnamed robot
from "Lost in Space":
>Danger Will Robinson! Danger!
and goes on:
>Discourse stream corrupted by labor theory of value! Danger!
>
>The LTV is not true: average market prices are *not* labor values, and the
>deviations of the average prices of particular commodities from their
>labor values are *not* simple redistributions of "surplus value" from boss
>to boss. IP protections can create value; IP protections can destroy
>value; they can raise the profit rate; they can raise or lower the real wage...
It's hard to say that Marx's "law of value" is "not true" if one doesn't
understand it, just as it's hard to say that it's "true" if one doesn't
understand it. In fact, I think there's a lot of questions about what "it"
is. One thing is that the "LTV" does _not_ assert is that "average market
prices" equal "labor values." Quite the contrary: deviations of prices from
values are just as important as their connection with each other. Marx was
quite conscious before he started CAPITAL that values and prices deviated
from each other. BTW, Duncan Foley's article in the most recent issue of
the REVIEW OF RADICAL POLITICAL ECONOMICS is quite good on this subject.
Marx's "law of value" is first and foremost NOT a theory of prices.
)))))))))))))))))
CB: For a quick summary of the basic differences among value ( exchange-value), price
and profit in Marx's theory, see _Value, Price and Profit_, a lecture by Karl Marx.
