> >Quite rightly, these fundamental questions come round and go round. > >I have not been able to keep up with all the recent posts. But I notice >that some of the debate is using the abbreviation LTV. > >Marx and Engels never used the term Labour Theory of Value, nor did they >invent it.
Of course not, and I have repeatedly said that Marx was using and developing the best political economy of his time.. > >Marx and Engels to be fair also did not formulate a neat definition of the >Law of Value, but LOV is the term they did use. Well, he does say, for example, "that which determines the magnitude of the value of any article is the amount oof labor socially necessary, or the labor timer socially necessaey for production." This at the very start pf CI, Part I. Marx footnotes an author of an a "remarkable anonymous work" written circa 1740. That is the formulationI use. > >I suggest that approaching these debates with the mind set of LTV, sustains >an assumption which is essentially about a simple equation: > >the value of something is its labour content (with various subtleties added >about terminology and more or lessness) > >LOV however is essentially a whole systems dynamical approach to the >circulation of the collective social product that is produced in the form >of commodities. That's not a "law," in any normal scientific sense. A "law" is a precisely formulable generalization (n.b., not a definitional assumption) stating relations between variables. I think the law of value is that the price of commodities tends towards their value in long runm, with certain determinate disturbances that imply that prices tend to converge on pricesof prodyction. > >Crudely, the difference between LTV and LOV is the difference between a >simple equation, which may indeed be weak nourishment, and a dynamic >system. > It's possible, and a standard move of defenders of Marxian value theory, to make immune from testing and criticism by making it so fuzzy that it lacks determinate meaning. Who could object to asytstems-dynamical approach to the economy? jks _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
