>But Justin, do you accept that what you criticise as being redundant some >of us would merely call a labor theory of prices?
Not merely. Marx attemptedto use value theory to do a lot of work, e.g., as part od a theory of crisis, as a component of his account of commodity fetishism, as an account of the nature of money, and, of course, as the explanation of profit, exploitation, surplus value, and the rate of these things. However, he correctly started from the premises that to do this work, value had to be quantity with a determinable magnitude, and price is the point of entry into that because value "appears" as price and profit in the phenonemal world. If value theory breaks down there, it's toast, as Marx also recognized, which is why he and Engels and traditional Marxism were concerned with the transformation problem. In these respect he was more intellectually honest that the latter-day defenders of value theory who want the "quantity" without being able to determine its measure. > >And from the perspective of it being an expanation of exploitation, some of >us would say that childen notice there are grossly unfair and inexplicable >differences in society. Unlike me, right? I think that all the inequalities that exist are just great. But here you depart from Marxism: "Unfair" is a charge he would dismissa sa bourgeois whine. As a liberal democrat, I myself think he was wrong about that--I think justice talk is very important--but I find it odd that you insist on orthodoxy in political economy while rejecting Marx's ideologiekritik of morality in general and talk of justice and fairness in particular. Finally, I don't understand why you think you can't explain inequality with value theory. Here's Roemer['s explanation: the bourgeoisie grabbed the means of production by force or acquired them by luck, and used their ill-gotten resources to maintain their unfair advantages. Not a whisper of value, and so far as it goes a perfectly true, and indeed Marxian explanation. Some of us would say that the marxian theory >of >value is much bigger than an explanation of exploitation. > >Without being persuaded by us, do you acknowedge that such different >perspectives exist? Do you mean, do I recognize that you persist in error? Yes. jks _________________________________________________________________ Join the world’s largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
