Andrew Hagen writes:
>The Transformation Problem is in no way boring. IMHO it is at the crux of
>the question of the validity of classical Marxism. It is unfair, though,
>to judge Marx as a thinker who failed for this reason; Marx died before he
>could finish editing volume 2, and far before volume 3, where the Problem
>appears. Thus, we are left with a few crufty notes as interpreted by
>Engels. Engels was better than Marx at mathematical operations, and he
>couldn't make sense of his comrade's work. Nieither can the rest of the
>world. Every solution to the Transformation Problem proposed so far hinges
>on key assumptions not strictly justified by Marx's own corpus. Far from
>Boehm-Bawerk's claim that the Problem by its existence negates any
>validity of that corpus, however, it only calls into question Marx's
>economic thought.
I don't think that this is an accurate presentation of history or the
literature on this matter. I, for one, think that the so-called "New
solution" (which is hardly "new" at this point) solves all the issues.
Instead of burdening the list with this, I'll refer you to Duncan Foley's
work or to my article in the 1990 RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY volume. I
think these details don't belong on pen-l, however.
>In my view, the Transformation Problem is bound up with the labor theory
>of value. My big complaint against the LTV is its monovalency. Everything
>of "value" in the world must have that much labor tied up into it.
In addition to using Ricardo's phrase "labor theory of value" to discuss
Marx's non-Ricardian "law of value," this is a misinterpretation. It's only
commodities within a commodity producing society -- not "everything" ---
that have "value." Marx first and foremost interprets an economy as a
community (though it's a fragmented, undemocratic, and thus alienated one).
The "value" of a commodity is the contribution to that community by the
workers who produced it. Charlie Andrews' book FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY
is pretty good on this, and on the other issues discussed below. (I'm sure
Charlie can tell you where to get a copy.)
>Even diamonds and gold, and attractive chunks of deadwood.
This confuses issues of use-value, exchange-value (roughly, price), and
value. Attractive chunks of deadwood can have clear use-value without
having exchange-value or value (if I appropriate the deadwood for my living
room and carve it to make it even more attractive).
Even if I decide to put the deadwood into circulation in society (in which
case, it can gain value), its price reflects not just the socially
necessary abstract labor-time I put into picking it up, toting it, carving
it, and finishing it (its value), but also scarcity, perhaps because I have
some special artistic talent. Because of the scarcity of some commodities,
someone can _claim_ a lot of value (or "command" it, as Adam Smith put it)
without actually producing it. Thus, the mere ownership of land can get one
the ability to claim part of the society's product, even though that
ownership makes no contribution to society.
I don't know where people got the idea that Marx equated price with value.
He assumed they were equal sometimes (as in volume I of CAPITAL) but that
was an _assumption_.
>Value has one main source in the LTV. The LTV measures the value of one
>person's labor much like that of any other's. I find this particular
>assumption even less acceptable then the various NCE [??] assumptions.
Because we're talking about contributions of workers within a complex
societal division of labor to the community as a whole, it's reasonable to
talk about a single measure of these contributions, i.e., socially
necessary abstract labor time per unit. Similarly, if you are looking at
commodity-producing society from a capitalist perspective, or from the
perspective of individual participants in the system, it makes sense to
talk about a single measure, i.e., pesos per unit (the price).
Further, just because uses a single measure (e.g., the Celsius scale for
temperatures) doesn't imply "monovalency," i.e., a single-factor theory of
why the temperature is so high today.
>Whatever happened to overdetermination, as Resnick and Wolff termed
>dialectic, in "Knowledge and Class," in a somewhat unfortunate choice? Why
>can't value itself be overdetermined, that is, have more than one, or more
>than a few, causes? To me, the LTV's problem is its monovalency.
"Overdetermination" refers to an actual theory, usually to a theory of how
history works. Any specific institution or concrete event can be seen as
the result of several different causes, with the political and ideological
"levels" playing a role along with the economic. (I like Althusser's vision
of overdetermination better than Resnick & Wolff's, in which everything
determines the character of everything else.)
The "law of value" isn't a theory of this sort as much as it is a
heuristic, a basic framework used to gain understanding that allows us to
develop theories. In fact, I think that Marx's "law of value" is _true by
definition_, an accounting framework for the alienated community that is
commodity-producing society. As with similar frameworks -- like the
neoclassical utility-maximization model or the National Income and Product
Accounts, which are similarly tautological -- the issue is what you can get
out of it. I think Marx's heuristic produced a lot of extremely useful
insights.
>To really solve the Transformation Problem, I think we need to wholly
>revamp our theory of value. Of course, in so doing, we will be (at last)
>abandoning classical Marxism.
this last only follows if your premises are true. As I suggested above,
they aren't.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
