On 6/4/06, Jon Baranov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I am having troble deciding between two theories of value: scarcity need and labor cost of production. I found by accident a long, long thread on this list about the labor theory of value where B. DeLong said "a commodity has (exchange) value if it's scarce regardless of whether there is wage labor. M Perelman replied "a commodity has value if it embodies labor even if it is not scarce".
The basic neoclassical "theory of value" is identical to the NC "theory of price," i.e., supply and demand. Thus, for BDL (no relation of OBL), an item has a "value" if it has a price (exchange value) because its supply isn't of infinite elasticity at zero price (but is instead above zero -- i.e., the commodity is scarce) and because people want it and are willing and able to pay for it. On the other hand, for Marxian political economy, there's a distinction between "value" and "price" (as sketched in volume III of CAPITAL). The values of commodities stand behind and help us understand and explain prices. Thus, values play a role a little bit like constrained utility-maximization and production functions in NC theory (which stand behind and help us understand prices). Of course, the _way_ in which values help to explain prices is different from that of util-max and prod-funs. The latter are simply a matter of microeconomics: the individual decisions and the individual productions explain individual prices. But values are part of a macro-societal explanation, seeing capitalism as a system of exploitation and then the distribution of the loot among competing capitalists. MP is right that a commodity need not be scarce to have a value. For example, during a recession or depression, labor-power and other productive inputs are far from scarce. That means that many products aren't scarce. According to NC economics, they thus should have zero price, as should labor-power and other productive inputs. The NC explanation for why these prices aren't equal to zero is essentially frictions: it takes time for prices to adjust.
But marginalists since Jevons have claimed that the labor affects the value of a commodity only to the extent that the commodity becomes scarce - a commodity that can be produced in 5 days will be more scarce that one produced in 1 hour. Neoclassical economic theory claims to discover universal economic rules and thus diregards whether the costs of production are born by labor or some natural force.
In NC economics, the costs of production are basically rooted in subjective decision. The labor done depends on invidivual labor-leisure decisions, while the amount of fixed means of production available depends on individual decisions about how much to consume now vs. how much to save. However, it's true that natural scarcity (i.e., the availability of land and natural resources) is more than just subjective.
What for Marxism only appears as a relationship between things [people?] is really a relationship between things for the Marginalist because natural scarcity not a social relation. What is Marxism's objection to this characterization of value? (Here's what Lionel Robbins says economics is about: "Human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means that have alternative uses". cit in Sweezy, Theoy of Capitalist Development.)
the main objection to the NC world-view (and the characterization of economics as the decision of how to deal with scarcity, with the allocation of scarce goods among competing ends) is that it totally ignores the social dimension, including the way in which our decisions are determined by our biographies in society.
Could anyone suggest works (preferably from Marxian perspective) that deal with this issue very plainly? (I'm reading the hilferding/bohm-bawerk debate - difficult for the amateur. Where does Marx deal with this in Capital? )
the B-B/H debate is a response to the fact that Marx didn't present his views very clearly in CAPITAL. He died before he could finish volumes II & III and the THEORIES OF SURPLUS-VALUE. If he had finished, I believe, it would have been clearer. Perhaps the clearest books I've seen on this subject are John Harrison's MARXIST ECONOMICS FOR SOCIALISTS and Charlie Andrews' FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY (see http://www.laborrepublic.org/). Sabri:
... Does information have any value? Information is not scarce since once it is produced anyone can use it at no
cost to others. Further, once information is produced its reproduction embodies more or less no labor, for all practical purposes, that is.< Despite the extremely low reproduction costs, information suffers from artifical scarcity (human-made monopolies). (That's what the "intellectual property rights" movement is all about.) Therefore it has a price, and a value.
Is information a noncommodity with some value or a commodity with no value?<
it's an artificial commodity. (However, in some ways, _all_ commodities are artificial.) If not for the institutions of artificial scarcity, information would likely be more like a public good. There might not be an incentive for capitalists to produce it, so that non-capitalist ways would have to be organized. (However, I think the answer really depends on what kind of information you're talking about. "Information" _per se_ seems a bit abstract.) -- Jim Devine
