JKS writes:>Well, you know better than I. But they don't teach marxian value theory either, and the USSR's early attempt to use what it thought was that theory as a planning tool was a disaster. So, anyway, maybe if Daniel was right, we don't need a value theory at all.<
1. The fact that they don't teach Marx's law of value in business school should be seen as evidence of its validity. After all, in Marx's theory, business people's ideology -- what BBAs and MBAs learn -- would be the most distorted by commodity fetishism (the illusions created by competition). 2. I've seen nothing in Marx that suggests that the law of value can or should be used as a planning method. (Where _does_ this idea come from?) In fact, it was extremely controversial when Stalin said that the so-called "labor theory of value" applied under what he called socialism, since some said (correctly) that value was a concept of commodity production, not of a system that was supposed to be producing for use, not exchange. (BTW, cybernetics in this context seems a perfect tool for techno-bureaucratic rule, as opposed to Stalin's rule by the party machine.) 3. Charlie Andrews' interesting FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY includes a version of law of value in his first stage of socialism: he has not-for-profit organizations competing in socially-controlled markets, so that (all else equal) prices tend toward values rather than toward prices of production (as under capitalism). Of course, he doesn't get bogged down in this first stage and allows for openings to move toward a higher stage of socialism. Jim Devine
