RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
There _is_ a similarity between religious thinking and Marxian thinking, i.e., there is a hard core of concepts and even theories that cannot be falsified. But scientific thinking says (1) that such concepts should be clearly identified; (2) their role should be minimized relative to the size of the corpus of scientific thought. Thus, I acknowledge that Marx's law of value is a true-by-definition accounting framework (an alternative to using prices in accounting) that is used by Marx to break through the fetishism of commodities and thus to figure out the basic nature workings of the capitalist mode of production. But if people stop with that, it's worthless (except as an absolutely necessary component in understanding Marx). Thus, my research on value emphasizes the utility of value, applying value concepts to address new questions. -- Jim Devine -Original Message- From: Ken Hanly To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 2/9/02 6:04 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22680] Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism My fuzzy understanding of this is that the hard core of tautologies nevertheless supports if the theory is progressive a research program creating theories that are empirically testable and/or useful in explaining empirical data. Most religious theories would employ supernatural entites such as a deity or deities in explaining events whereas Marxists avoid use of such concepts. There is a certain affinity between the tautological core concepts of some aspects of Marxism and many theological therories in that they are not themselves subject to empirical disconfirmation directly. I suppose just as Candide found that this is the best of all possible worlds was not a very positive research project and lose faith in religions many think the same of showing the ultimate revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class and lose faith in Marxism. Can't theories have explanatory power interpret events, make sense of them, in an illuminating way even though they may not directly predict precisely what will happen. Religious theories can give meaning to individual lives by enabling individual to see the world in terms of some basic conceptions, Marxism can play a similar role in peoples lives. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 6:24 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22358] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism - Original Message - From: Ken Hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 10:13 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22213] Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism I don't understand this stuff about the observational consequences of theories at the level of generality of the theory of value. What if the labor theory of value is part of the central core of Marxism ? If that is so then in itself it does not have any specific empirical implications period. Jim Devine seems to take a position of this sort in a piece on the web: Marx's goals for the LoV were to analyze the societal nature and laws of motion of the capitalism; another way of saying this is that the LoV summarizes the method of analysis that Marx applies in Capital. The LoV is part of what Imre Lakatos [1970] terms the hard core of tautologies and simplifying assumptions that is a necessary part of any research program.1 The quantitative aspect of value should be seen as a true-by-definition accounting framework to be used to break through the fetishism of commodities -- allowing the analysis of capitalism as a social system. Prices, the accounting framework most used by economists, both reflect existing social relations and distort their appearance. It is necessary to have an alternative to prices if one wants to understand what is going on behind the level of appearances: looking at what people do in production (i.e., labor, value) helps reveal the social relations between them. If this interpretation is correct then Quine-Duhem's stuff is irrelevant not that it makes much sense to me anyway. Seems like a neanderthal idea to speak of theories implying empirical consequences just like that without assumptions conditions etc. assumed: or of evidence straightforwardly supporting a theory. So the Quine-Duhem stuff is not relevant and even if it were why should it be given any particular weight? Is it any less dubious than the Marxian theory of value? Cheers, Ken Hanly Ok but then what's to stop such skepticism creep? What makes any theory non-dubious if not observational consequences? This puts of lot of theories on the same level as theology, no? Ian
Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
My fuzzy understanding of this is that the hard core of tautologies nevertheless supports if the theory is progressive a research program creating theories that are empirically testable and/or useful in explaining empirical data. Most religious theories would employ supernatural entites such as a deity or deities in explaining events whereas Marxists avoid use of such concepts. There is a certain affinity between the tautological core concepts of some aspects of Marxism and many theological therories in that they are not themselves subject to empirical disconfirmation directly. I suppose just as Candide found that this is the best of all possible worlds was not a very positive research project and lose faith in religions many think the same of showing the ultimate revolutionary overthrow of capitalism by the working class and lose faith in Marxism. Can't theories have explanatory power interpret events, make sense of them, in an illuminating way even though they may not directly predict precisely what will happen. Religious theories can give meaning to individual lives by enabling individual to see the world in terms of some basic conceptions, Marxism can play a similar role in peoples lives. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 6:24 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22358] Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism - Original Message - From: Ken Hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 10:13 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22213] Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism I don't understand this stuff about the observational consequences of theories at the level of generality of the theory of value. What if the labor theory of value is part of the central core of Marxism ? If that is so then in itself it does not have any specific empirical implications period. Jim Devine seems to take a position of this sort in a piece on the web: Marx's goals for the LoV were to analyze the societal nature and laws of motion of the capitalism; another way of saying this is that the LoV summarizes the method of analysis that Marx applies in Capital. The LoV is part of what Imre Lakatos [1970] terms the hard core of tautologies and simplifying assumptions that is a necessary part of any research program.1 The quantitative aspect of value should be seen as a true-by-definition accounting framework to be used to break through the fetishism of commodities -- allowing the analysis of capitalism as a social system. Prices, the accounting framework most used by economists, both reflect existing social relations and distort their appearance. It is necessary to have an alternative to prices if one wants to understand what is going on behind the level of appearances: looking at what people do in production (i.e., labor, value) helps reveal the social relations between them. If this interpretation is correct then Quine-Duhem's stuff is irrelevant not that it makes much sense to me anyway. Seems like a neanderthal idea to speak of theories implying empirical consequences just like that without assumptions conditions etc. assumed: or of evidence straightforwardly supporting a theory. So the Quine-Duhem stuff is not relevant and even if it were why should it be given any particular weight? Is it any less dubious than the Marxian theory of value? Cheers, Ken Hanly Ok but then what's to stop such skepticism creep? What makes any theory non-dubious if not observational consequences? This puts of lot of theories on the same level as theology, no? Ian
Re: Historical Materialism
In a message dated 2/8/2002 10:01:20 AM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The measurement of the capital stock is in impossibility. Franklin Fisher once worked up the requirements for aggregation. Can't be done! The inability to calculate real depreciation presents another barrier. I mentioned this in passing before in questioning how seriously we should take estimates of profit rates as anything more than a rough rule of thumb. I absolutely concur with the impossibility of measuring a mode of expression on its own basis, which is the epitome of commodity fetishism. Transformation problem? Indeed. According to whom . . . bourgeois political economy. The question is the velocity of polarization of price and cost from value and why both assume independent modes of expression and finally sperate themselves from value, which in the eyes of the bourgeois is a question of a magnitude of capital yielding a uniform profit. But, hey . . . this of course is based on Engels articulation of the nodal line - historical trajectory and conclusion, of value. It was Marx who unfolded the law of value and it remains the amount of socially necessary labor in the production of commodities. Melvin
Re: RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
RB writes: Doug thinks Marx was an underconsumptionist; at the same Doug subscribes to the wage led profit squeeze thesis. DH writes: See, this is exactly what I was thinking of when I quoted Callari's observation that VT is a substitute for politics. I don't think you could ever prove this conclusively one way or the other using numbers. But in political terms, it's not the least bit ambiguous - the ruling class felt like it was losing control in the 1970s. Workers were sullen and rebellious, the U.S. lost the Vietnam War, and the Third World was talking about a new world economic order. As Paul McCracken's report for the OECD put it (and I wish I could find this exact quote again, it was a beaut), anxiety over inflation was inseparable from masses in the streets. The rebels were crushed. RB wasn't talking about value theory [VT] above. Instead, he's talking about a specific crisis theory. That's a different (lower) level of abstraction than VT. --JD thanks for the clarification. here is something from Felton Shortall that attempts to integrate the two levels (Jim may be interested in this book the Incomplete Marx. Avebury, 1994 because it complements Michael Lebowitz's argument re: the missing book on wage labor): Of course intra industry competition will tend to depress depreciation charges and hence the imputed value of fixed capital. But only to a small degree. If capitals were unable to sustain the imputed value of their fixed capital no one would risk investing in any industrial capital which had significant proportion of fixed capital, since if they did they would face the prospect of the devaluation of their capital far outweighing any prospective profit. With all the capitals in a particular branch of industry in more or less the same boat, the formation of the market value will tend to impute the industry's average historic value of fixed capital. With the preservation of the historic values of fixed capital the devaluation of capital due to the increasing social productivity of labour becomes deferred. But this gives free play to the effects of the rising organic composition of capital on the general rate of profit. As capital accumulates on the basis of historic values the rate of profit will decline. Sooner or later the critical point is reached. Capital has accumulated to such a degreee that it has become a barrier to its own self-expansion. Profitable accumulation is at an end. But this is only on the basis of historic values. If capital was evaluated ont eh basis of replacment values, if the deferred couneracting effects of rising productivity of labor could be brought into play, the rate of profit culd be restored to health and profitable accumulation resumed. Indeed this is the way capital is able to overcome the falling rate of profit as a barrier to further accumulation. Through rupture and crisis the long pent up devaluation of capital is released all at once. The old structure of historic values are forcibly reduced to that of the new. But this does not only mean the simple devaluation of capital, but also its widespread destruction; its devalorization, bankruptcy and ruin. p. 404 Yet Shortall seems to me perhaps too sanguine about the ability of rupture and crisis to restore in themselves the profitability of capital! Rakesh
Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Ian Murray wrote: = As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV has circularities of it's own. I suspect I'm over my head here both re political economy epistemology, or whatever is at stake, But I think I'll butt in anyhow. In _German Ideology_ (I'm paraphrasing from memory) M/E claim they do have premises -- namely, actual living individuals. (Actual living is my insertion to allow for the repudiation of the abstract individual in the Theses on Feurerbach.) I gloss this as affirming that wherever and whenever we find outselves we are already caught up in, constituted by, action (social relations), indepently of which we have no existence. So now the question is how, under given historical conditions, those actual individuals (defined by their social relations at any historical point) allocate their living activity; how do they transform their condition while reproducing it. And I think that starting out there, we get a LOV totally different from (e.g.) Ricardo's, and moreover, the only place to start is with that living human activity, whether or not following it up brings us back to our premises. In other words, we must _either_ hold to some form of LOV as fundamental, or we must place outselves outside of time and space, in a Platonic empyrean, examing the world from outside as Plato attempts to do in the _Republic_. Not only neoclassical but all bourgeois forms of political economy (economics) lead us back either to Plato or to William James's blooming buzzing chaos. (Quote not accurate but makes the point.) Carrol P.S. A philological note: _G.I._ does not, I think, have any independent validity as a source of Marx's or Engels's thought -- i.e. it is valid (as a source) only as corrected looking backward from their mature work. When used in isolation from or independently of that later work it makes one wish the mice had done a better job of criticism.
RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? Carrol Cox wrote: I suspect I'm over my head here both re political economy epistemology, or whatever is at stake, But I think I'll butt in anyhow. In _German Ideology_ (I'm paraphrasing from memory) M/E claim they do have premises -- namely, actual living individuals. (Actual living is my insertion to allow for the repudiation of the abstract individual in the Theses on Feurerbach.) in the GI, ME are pretty clear that they're talking about actual living individuals, not abstract ones. I gloss this as affirming that wherever and whenever we find outselves we are already caught up in, constituted by, action (social relations), indepently of which we have no existence. So now the question is how, under given historical conditions, those actual individuals (defined by their social relations at any historical point) allocate their living activity; how do they transform their condition while reproducing it. And I think that starting out there, we get a LOV totally different from (e.g.) Ricardo's, and moreover, the only place to start is with that living human activity, whether or not following it up brings us back to our premises. In other words, we must _either_ hold to some form of LOV as fundamental, or we must place outselves outside of time and space, in a Platonic empyrean, examing the world from outside as Plato attempts to do in the _Republic_. Not only neoclassical but all bourgeois forms of political economy (economics) lead us back either to Plato or to William James's blooming buzzing chaos. (Quote not accurate but makes the point.) that makes sense to me. P.S. A philological note: _G.I._ does not, I think, have any independent validity as a source of Marx's or Engels's thought -- i.e. it is valid (as a source) only as corrected looking backward from their mature work. When used in isolation from or independently of that later work it makes one wish the mice had done a better job of criticism. yes, but the GI and THE THESES ON FEUERBACH present the clearest explanation of ME's materialist conception of history. -- Jim Devine
Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). This is a fundamental confusion. Firstly, you talk only about physics and not geometry. Geometry proceeds from independent axioms and postulates and does not involve circularities. Moreover, the fact that you can rewrite equations like F=ma with different variables on the left side of the equality does not make physics circular. In fact, the variables are implicitly defined in the context of the entire system of equation in which they appear. Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? In defense of Popper, it does not. I am not a Popperian. And Popper was (despite the way he is usually taught) an early discoverer of what is called the Quine-Duhem thesis, that you can hold any proposition true by making appropriate adjustments elsewhere. The unobjecionable point he had tomake about falsificationsim is that a hypothesis sin;t worth much if you threat it as true come what may, amking it absolutely immune to testing. If all of social science is like that, then it is worthless. But that's not what I think of as good social science. I do rather suspect that some of the defenses of value theory one display lately have smacked of this vice, though. jks _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. I wrote:what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). Justin says:This is a fundamental confusion. Firstly, you talk only about physics and not geometry. Geometry proceeds from independent axioms and postulates and does not involve circularities. no, the definition of major concepts such as a point and a line are quite circular. If you drop circularities from geometry, you also drop circles and other geometric forms. Moreover, the fact that you can rewrite equations like F=ma with different variables on the left side of the equality does not make physics circular. I didn't say that physics was circular. Rather, I said that physics involve[s] circularity. That's the difference between the proposition that P = C and that P includes C as a sub-set. In fact, the variables are implicitly defined in the context of the entire system of equation in which they appear. that's exactly what I said. Obviously, you have a different definition of circularity than I do? Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? In defense of Popper, it does not. I am not a Popperian. good for you, but I was asking Ian. I'm not a Popperian popover either, but I think it's a useful thing for social scientists to try to make falsifiable predictions. In other words, it's good to take intellectual risks. It's also good to know when one's system is such that different parts are implicitly defined in the context of the entire theoretical system, so that one knows the limits of one's thinking. And Popper was (despite the way he is usually taught) an early discoverer of what is called the Quine-Duhem thesis, that you can hold any proposition true by making appropriate adjustments elsewhere. good for him. The unobjecionable point he had tomake about falsificationsim is that a hypothesis sin;t [ain't?] worth much if you threat [treat?] it as true come what may, amking it absolutely immune to testing. If all of social science is like that, then it is worthless. All social science that I know of involves _ceteris paribus_ clauses and the like, which doesn't make the theory worthless (in my eyes), but does make it non-falsifiable. (The reason why _my_ theory didn't work was because all else wasn't equal!) BTW, the Popperian falsification criterion is itself immune to falsification. But that's not what I think of as good social science. good. I do rather suspect that some of the defenses of value theory one display lately have smacked of this vice, though. which ones? JDevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Justin Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] The empirical equivalence thesis is part of Q-D, no? Wasn't meaning to suggest it was the whole shebang. I don't think so. It's verificationist. Q-D is not. jks === And Q-D incorporates the EET precisely to show it's limitations lead to the UTE, no? Time for some Web of Belief tweaking eh? Ian
RE: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Fortunately for physics there is an independent determinant of mass, that is gravitational acceleration which, in turn, is determined by the gravitational field. So this provides a way out of this particular circularity. Is it too much to claim that the concepts of labor, labor-power and the historically determined reproduction value of labor serve a similar function in political economy? -Original Message- From: Devine, James [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:17 AM To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED] ' Subject: [PEN-L:22516] RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? Carrol Cox wrote: I suspect I'm over my head here both re political economy epistemology, or whatever is at stake, But I think I'll butt in anyhow. In _German Ideology_ (I'm paraphrasing from memory) M/E claim they do have premises -- namely, actual living individuals. (Actual living is my insertion to allow for the repudiation of the abstract individual in the Theses on Feurerbach.) in the GI, ME are pretty clear that they're talking about actual living individuals, not abstract ones. I gloss this as affirming that wherever and whenever we find outselves we are already caught up in, constituted by, action (social relations), indepently of which we have no existence. So now the question is how, under given historical conditions, those actual individuals (defined by their social relations at any historical point) allocate their living activity; how do they transform their condition while reproducing it. And I think that starting out there, we get a LOV totally different from (e.g.) Ricardo's, and moreover, the only place to start is with that living human activity, whether or not following it up brings us back to our premises. In other words, we must _either_ hold to some form of LOV as fundamental, or we must place outselves outside of time and space, in a Platonic empyrean, examing the world from outside as Plato attempts to do in the _Republic_. Not only neoclassical but all bourgeois forms of political economy (economics) lead us back either to Plato or to William James's blooming buzzing chaos. (Quote not accurate but makes the point.) that makes sense to me. P.S. A philological note: _G.I._ does not, I think, have any independent validity as a source of Marx's or Engels's thought -- i.e. it is valid (as a source) only as corrected looking backward from their mature work. When used in isolation from or independently of that later work it makes one wish the mice had done a better job of criticism. yes, but the GI and THE THESES ON FEUERBACH present the clearest explanation of ME's materialist conception of history. -- Jim Devine
RE: Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism
Re geometry. I think Goedel's paradox tends to refute your statement. Trying to get out of this box, however, has resulted in a tremendous series of advances in mathematics. I was impressed by this in reading a recent popular account of the history of mathematics leading up to the solution of Fermat's last theorem. Re physics. I made an analogy in my earlier email. Here is another F=ma is subsumed by law of the conservation of energy. Physics problems that can be solved with F=ma can all be solved much more generally and elegantly with the Hamiltonian approach to conservation of energy, which is a much more macro description of the problem. In Marx, is the analogy the macro conditions for the equivalence of economic aggregates. -Original Message- From: Justin Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 10:49 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:22518] Re: RE: Premises, Circularities etc was Re: Historical Materialism Ian Murray wrote: As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV [sic] has circularities of it's own. what circularities are those? and why is circularity bad, unless there is nothing to the theory but circularities? Physics and geometry, for example, both involve circularities (e.g. force is defined by mass times acceleration, but mass is defined by force/acceleration and acceleration is defined by force/mass). This is a fundamental confusion. Firstly, you talk only about physics and not geometry. Geometry proceeds from independent axioms and postulates and does not involve circularities. Moreover, the fact that you can rewrite equations like F=ma with different variables on the left side of the equality does not make physics circular. In fact, the variables are implicitly defined in the context of the entire system of equation in which they appear. Are you following Blaug to accept Popperian falsification, a criterion that makes _all_ social science (or almost all) worthless? In defense of Popper, it does not. I am not a Popperian. And Popper was (despite the way he is usually taught) an early discoverer of what is called the Quine-Duhem thesis, that you can hold any proposition true by making appropriate adjustments elsewhere. The unobjecionable point he had tomake about falsificationsim is that a hypothesis sin;t worth much if you threat it as true come what may, amking it absolutely immune to testing. If all of social science is like that, then it is worthless. But that's not what I think of as good social science. I do rather suspect that some of the defenses of value theory one display lately have smacked of this vice, though. jks _ Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 1:45 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22558] Historical Materialism Historical Materialism by Justin Schwartz 07 February 2002 05:59 UTC As we've all been remiss in pointing out until now, the most powerful critique of Capital -- in the last decade at the very least -- makes no use whatsoever of value theory. What is missing from that book.Wall Street, that value theory would make substantive improvements on? well, we have it from very wise people that you can't begin to understand or explain capitalism without value theory, we're stucvk at the level of mere ecletic phenomenal static description. Sorry, Doug. jks ^^^ CB: Actually, you can begin to explain capitalism without value theory, you just can't get anywhere near finishing explaining it without value theory. === What do you mean by finishing explaining capitalism? Is there one true way to explain capitalism? Have we transcended Q-D in political economy? Ian
Re: Historical Materialism
Historical Materialism by Justin Schwartz 07 February 2002 05:59 UTC As we've all been remiss in pointing out until now, the most powerful critique of Capital -- in the last decade at the very least -- makes no use whatsoever of value theory. What is missing from that book.Wall Street, that value theory would make substantive improvements on? well, we have it from very wise people that you can't begin to understand or explain capitalism without value theory, we're stucvk at the level of mere ecletic phenomenal static description. Sorry, Doug. jks ^^^ CB: Actually, you can begin to explain capitalism without value theory, you just can't get anywhere near finishing explaining it without value theory. Isn't value theory a premise of Doug's book ? Doug thinks Marx was an underconsumptionist; at the same Doug subscribes to the wage led profit squeeze thesis. Doug's an eclectic. Doug's hostility to value theory derives in part from his rejection of the significance of the Yaffe, Shaikh, Perlo, and Moseley finding that despite the so called wage led squeeze on profits, s/v has had a tendency to rise throughout. Doug thinks his theory is radical because it imlies that since the working class had the ability to choke the profitability of the working class it may have the power to overthrow the capitalist class. But there are empirical problems with the wage squeeze theory raised by Fred and others, and I don't think Doug has even recognized them. And I won't here get into why the implications are not as politically radical as Doug thinks. Moreover, that capital accumulation depends on a rising s/v does in fact disclose the limits of this mode of production since as greater difficulties are faced in raising the rate of exploitation, the system comes to itself depend on convulsive crises by which as a result of the destruction and devaluation of capital the value composition of capital can be readjusted to the rate of exploitation such that accumulation can resumed and the realization of surplus value thereby ensured. On the basis of value theory, it is clarified that the capitalist way out of crises is not putting more purchasing power in the hands of workers or simply increasing the rate of exploitation. If the system as a whole cannot be put right even through a protracted crisis, then one capital survives ever more only at the expense of another, yielding slaughterous destruction in the world market and the political tensions to what gives rise. Barbarism or socialism. RB
Re: Historical Materialism
Charles Brown wrote: Isn't value theory a premise of Doug's book ? If you mean that workers produce everything of value (in conjunction with some goods supplied by nature), and that much division and redivision of the spoils goes on, and that finance can obscure those fundamentals, yes. If you mean the rest of it - OCC, the transoformation problem, the distiction between productive and unproductive labor, etc. - then no. Damn waste of time, I say. Doug
Re: Re: Historical Materialism
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Doug thinks Marx was an underconsumptionist; at the same Doug subscribes to the wage led profit squeeze thesis. See, this is exactly what I was thinking of when I quoted Callari's observation that VT is a substitute for politics. I don't think you could ever prove this conclusively one way or the other using numbers. But in political terms, it's not the least bit ambiguous - the ruling class felt like it was losing control in the 1970s. Workers were sullen and rebellious, the U.S. lost the Vietnam War, and the Third World was talking about a new world economic order. As Paul McCracken's report for the OECD put it (and I wish I could find this exact quote again, it was a beaut), anxiety over inflation was inseparable from masses in the streets. The rebels were crushed. Doug
RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Charles Brown wrote: Isn't value theory a premise of Doug's book ? Doug writes: If you mean that workers produce everything of value (in conjunction with some goods supplied by nature), and that much division and redivision of the spoils goes on, and that finance can obscure those fundamentals, yes. If you mean the rest of it - OCC, the transoformation problem, the distiction between productive and unproductive labor, etc. - then no. Damn waste of time, I say. The rising OCC theory seems a waste of time except those specifically interested in crisis theory (and the dogmatic version is just a pain, like all dogma), while the Ricardian transformation problem (i.e. the derivation of mathematical relations between prices and values) seems a total distraction. But your book is suggesting that all of Wall Street is involved in unproductive labor, Doug. Jim D.
Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2002 4:01 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22576] RE: Re: Historical Materialism Charles Brown wrote: Isn't value theory a premise of Doug's book ? Doug writes: If you mean that workers produce everything of value (in conjunction with some goods supplied by nature), and that much division and redivision of the spoils goes on, and that finance can obscure those fundamentals, yes. If you mean the rest of it - OCC, the transoformation problem, the distiction between productive and unproductive labor, etc. - then no. Damn waste of time, I say. The rising OCC theory seems a waste of time except those specifically interested in crisis theory (and the dogmatic version is just a pain, like all dogma), while the Ricardian transformation problem (i.e. the derivation of mathematical relations between prices and values) seems a total distraction. But your book is suggesting that all of Wall Street is involved in unproductive labor, Doug. Jim D. I couldn't help but see it as people playing musical chairs with claims on the future of production. Ian
Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Devine, James wrote: But your book is suggesting that all of Wall Street is involved in unproductive labor, Doug. But Wall Street is also about arranging the ownership of productive assets and allocating investment. Doug
Re: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
Doug writes: Doug thinks Marx was an underconsumptionist; at the same Doug subscribes to the wage led profit squeeze thesis. See, this is exactly what I was thinking of when I quoted Callari's observation that VT is a substitute for politics. I don't think you could ever prove this conclusively one way or the other using numbers. prove what? problems were surely overcome not by increasing the purchasing power of the working class, against your sometimes underconsumption theory predicts. But in political terms, it's not the least bit ambiguous - the ruling class felt like it was losing control in the 1970s. Workers were sullen and rebellious, against rising rates of exploitation or wages not keeping up with value of labor power perhaps in part as a result of greater tax reductions. the U.S. lost the Vietnam War, leading to inflationary pressure in the process that threatened workers. and the Third World was talking about a new world economic order. the terms of trade had turned against OPEC in the 60s; the embargo was as much a defensive as offensive action. As Paul McCracken's report for the OECD put it (and I wish I could find this exact quote again, it was a beaut), anxiety over inflation was inseparable from masses in the streets. The rebels were crushed. Doug Which should have led to a much greater recovery in the profit rate than it did if profits/wage ratio was the main independent variable, as you imply when you're not focused on the problem of too high a s/v realizing in Dept II output for which there is insufficient consumer demand. That the crushing did not lead to a full restoration of profitability underlines the importance of the vcc and u/p labor ratio which you want to junk. At any rate, what value theory explains is why this barbaric repression of the working class-- as well as the destruction and devaluation of capital in part effected by Volcker's bankruptcy-inducing high interest regime and regressive tax reform at the expense of social darwinist social policy and the turning of the terms of trade against raw materials producers-- restored profitability (though only in part as Fred M emphasizes) and renewed capitalist accumulation (such that it was). That this is the capitalist way out of crises is explained on the basis of the law of value. Rakesh
Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Charles Brown wrote: Isn't value theory a premise of Doug's book ? Doug writes: If you mean that workers produce everything of value (in conjunction with some goods supplied by nature), and that much division and redivision of the spoils goes on, and that finance can obscure those fundamentals, yes. If you mean the rest of it - OCC, the transoformation problem, the distiction between productive and unproductive labor, etc. - then no. Damn waste of time, I say. The rising OCC theory seems a waste of time except those specifically interested in crisis theory (and the dogmatic version is just a pain, like all dogma), except that it illuminates what is plain for all to see--the importance not greater purchasing power as a 'solution' and/or solution but of the destruction and the devaluation of capital in the restoration of profitability, accumulation and therefore the realization of surplus value. rb
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I have never thought that the productive/unproductive labor opposition was important -- but I wonder: Doug Henwood wrote: Devine, James wrote: But your book is suggesting that all of Wall Street is involved in unproductive labor, Doug. But Wall Street is also about arranging the ownership of productive assets This, precisely, is unproductive labor as Marx describes it: labor iinvolved in the realization and distribution of surplus value. and allocating investment. It's been a few years since I read your book, but I sort of remember it as specifically claiming that Wall Street did NOT allocate investment. Carrol Doug
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Carrol Cox wrote: It's been a few years since I read your book, but I sort of remember it as specifically claiming that Wall Street did NOT allocate investment. WS doesn't have a large role in funding investment, but firms make investments based on what the stock market will like. Doug
Re: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: except that it illuminates what is plain for all to see--the importance not greater purchasing power as a 'solution' and/or solution but of the destruction and the devaluation of capital in the restoration of profitability, accumulation and therefore the realization of surplus value. Liquidate liquidate liquidate - this is Mellon and the prophets! Doug
Re: Re: Historical Materialism
Rakesh, let Doug speak for himself. Rakesh Bhandari wrote: Doug thinks Marx was an underconsumptionist; at the same Doug subscribes to the wage led profit squeeze thesis. Doug's an eclectic. Doug's hostility to value theory derives in part from his rejection of the significance of the Yaffe, Shaikh, Perlo, and Moseley finding that despite the so called wage led squeeze on profits, s/v has had a tendency to rise throughout. Doug thinks his theory is radical because it imlies that since the working class had the ability to choke the profitability of the working class it may have the power to overthrow the capitalist class. But there are empirical problems with the wage squeeze theory raised by Fred and others, and I don't think Doug has even recognized them. And I won't here get into why the implications are not as politically radical as Doug thinks. Moreover, that capital accumulation depends on a rising s/v does in fact disclose the limits of this mode of production since as greater difficulties are faced in raising the rate of exploitation, the system comes to itself depend on convulsive crises by which as a result of the destruction and devaluation of capital the value composition of capital can be readjusted to the rate of exploitation such that accumulation can resumed and the realization of surplus value thereby ensured. On the basis of value theory, it is clarified that the capitalist way out of crises is not putting more purchasing power in the hands of workers or simply increasing the rate of exploitation. If the system as a whole cannot be put right even through a protracted crisis, then one capital survives ever more only at the expense of another, yielding slaughterous destruction in the world market and the political tensions to what gives rise. Barbarism or socialism. RB -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Rakesh Bhandari wrote: except that it illuminates what is plain for all to see--the importance not greater purchasing power as a 'solution' and/or solution but of the destruction and the devaluation of capital in the restoration of profitability, accumulation and therefore the realization of surplus value. Liquidate liquidate liquidate - this is Mellon and the prophets! Doug But even Mellon here belies the optimistic faith, soon to be shattered, that society can master its own crises as long as there is no political interference with sharp and short downturns. Yet as Adolf Lowe remarked after the world war the crises intrinsic to the capitalist system have lost their virulence; but if we consider an international destruction of value like the world war as the modern form of crisis in the age of imperialism, and there is much to be said for the view, there is little room for extravagant hopes of 'spontaneous stabilization.' Quoted in Mattick, Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory, p. 120 Doug, as I understand value theory, there is a prediction of an inevitable dialectical proces of disturbances, contradictions, and crises--not an absolute, purely economic impossibility of accumulation, but a constant alternation between the overcoming of crisis and its reproduction at a higher level until the destruction of the underlying social relations by the working class or the self-emancipation of peanuts. rb
Re: Re: Historical Materialism
Q-D underdetermination asserts that if two theories are equivalent in their empirical entailments then some other criteria needs to be used to compare explanatory virtues etc. No, that's Q's empirical equivalence thesis. The Q-D thesis just holds that theories are interconnected networks of propositions, and you can hold true any one of them (even in the face of empirical refutation) by making appropriate adjustmemnts elsewhere. If the main results of the LTV and or the LoV whether in a quantitative-qualitative combination or relying singly on quantitative or qualitative approaches adds nothing to what can be achieved in terms of *explanation* without them, then why shouldn't Ockam's razor apply--to concepts, not entities? Quite. _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
If the main results of the LTV and or the LoV whether in a quantitative-qualitative combination or relying singly on quantitative or qualitative approaches adds nothing to what can be achieved in terms of *explanation* without them, then why shouldn't Ockam's razor apply--to concepts, not entities? Quite. But this is a perfect example of a fallacy of marginalism. I think the strongest anti-LTV/LOV case that you could make in this direction would be that LTV/LOV don't add anything to what can be explained by neoclassical marginal/general equilibrium theory. But even that would be open to the objection that it was also true that NC theory didn't add anything to LTV/LOV. It all depends where you start from ... And in any case, LTV has the considerable technical merit over NC theory that it offers a non-circular method to measure the capital stock. It also gives some hope of an explanation of the empirical fact that increases in productivity do not, in general, lead to a shortening of the working day, which would be a prediction of utility theory given any sensible assumption about preferences regarding leisure. dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___
Re: RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
But this is a perfect example of a fallacy of marginalism. I think the strongest anti-LTV/LOV case that you could make in this direction would be that LTV/LOV don't add anything to what can be explained by neoclassical marginal/general equilibrium theory. I don't accept GET. I'm basically a Robinsonian/Kaleckian institutionalist with a large dash of Austrian thrown in for spice. But even that would be open to the objection that it was also true that NC theory didn't add anything to LTV/LOV. It all depends where you start from ... No, I think the LTV fails on its own terms. We do not have empirically equivalent theories. We have a theory that points us in the direction of some good expalantions that can be stated with its apparatus. And in any case, LTV has the considerable technical merit over NC theory No doubt. That's not the only alternative. jks _ Chat with friends online, try MSN Messenger: http://messenger.msn.com
RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
I don't accept GET. I'm basically a Robinsonian/Kaleckian institutionalist with a large dash of Austrian thrown in for spice. Must make for some interesting dinner parties But I don't see how saying I'm an institutionalist gets you off the hook here. That's not a value theory, and neither Robinson nor Kalecki have either a way of telling us how to measure the capital stock without a value theory, or a value theory which is not fundamentally the equivalent of the LTV (I accept your point about a glass being half-empty or half full, but surely to heavens, any theory which accepts that value is only produced by labour is a labour theory of value; I've never understood why Robinson claimed that she didn't accept LTV). And in the context of capital and value theory , Austrian isn't a dash of spice; it's arsenic soup. It's a marginal theory of value, which hangs you right back on the hook that you got off with general equilibrium. I'm sure I don't understand your position properly, and I bet that reading those two papers will help. But I think it's clear that there are many good technical reasons to suppose that economics needs *some* value theory, and the labour theory of value shapes up pretty well compared to the competition. dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
I don't accept GET. I'm basically a Robinsonian/Kaleckian institutionalist with a large dash of Austrian thrown in for spice. Must make for some interesting dinner parties But I don't see how saying I'm an institutionalist gets you off the hook here. That's not a value theory, and neither Robinson nor Kalecki have either a way of telling us how to measure the capital stock without a value theory, or a value theory which is not fundamentally the equivalent of the LTV (I accept your point about a glass being half-empty or half full, but surely to heavens, any theory which accepts that value is only produced by labour is a labour theory of value; I've never understood why Robinson claimed that she didn't accept LTV). I haven't worked it out--I'm not an economist, and I'm not even an academic any more, I'm just a lawyer--but I have a sketch of a two-factor theory, recognizing labor contribution and demand as dual sources of value. And in the context of capital and value theory , Austrian isn't a dash of spice; it's arsenic soup. It's a marginal theory of value, which hangs you right back on the hook that you got off with general equilibrium. No, no. It's institutionalist and realistic. I'm sure I don't understand your position properly, and I bet that reading those two papers will help. Maybe. They onlya ddress VT by the by, WWWE is more on point. But I think it's clear that there are many good technical reasons to suppose that economics needs *some* value theory, and the labour theory of value shapes up pretty well compared to the competition. Humnph. jks _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
I don't accept GET. I'm basically a Robinsonian/Kaleckian institutionalist with a large dash of Austrian thrown in for spice. In her essay on Marxian economics, Joan Robinson attempts to point Marx's crisis theory in the direction of the kind of underconsumptionism that Sweezy was developing and Devine would later elaborate. You should understand that Brenner is a forceful critic of such underconsumptionism. So what it is that you are saying, Justin, is really not quite clear at all. rb
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
I don't accept GET. I'm basically a Robinsonian/Kaleckian institutionalist with a large dash of Austrian thrown in for spice. In her essay on Marxian economics, Joan Robinson attempts to point Marx's crisis theory in the direction of the kind of underconsumptionism that Sweezy was developing and Devine would later elaborate. You should understand that Brenner is a forceful critic of such underconsumptionism. So what it is that you are saying, Justin, is really not quite clear at all. No doubt I am unclear. However, it is possible to accept some of an author's views without accepting all of them. I urge this in the case of Robinsin, marx, and Brenner. jks _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Justin Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 7:48 AM Subject: [PEN-L:22458] Re: Re: Historical Materialism Q-D underdetermination asserts that if two theories are equivalent in their empirical entailments then some other criteria needs to be used to compare explanatory virtues etc. No, that's Q's empirical equivalence thesis. The Q-D thesis just holds that theories are interconnected networks of propositions, and you can hold true any one of them (even in the face of empirical refutation) by making appropriate adjustmemnts elsewhere. The empirical equivalence thesis is part of Q-D, no? Wasn't meaning to suggest it was the whole shebang. As we've all been remiss in pointing out until now, the most powerful critique of Capital -- in the last decade at the very least -- makes no use whatsoever of value theory. What is missing from that book.Wall Street, that value theory would make substantive improvements on? Ian Few economists pay much attention to corporations, or how they're owned and run [DH]
Re: RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Davies, Daniel [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, February 06, 2002 7:57 AM Subject: [PEN-L:22460] RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism If the main results of the LTV and or the LoV whether in a quantitative-qualitative combination or relying singly on quantitative or qualitative approaches adds nothing to what can be achieved in terms of *explanation* without them, then why shouldn't Ockam's razor apply--to concepts, not entities? Quite. But this is a perfect example of a fallacy of marginalism. I think the strongest anti-LTV/LOV case that you could make in this direction would be that LTV/LOV don't add anything to what can be explained by neoclassical marginal/general equilibrium theory. But even that would be open to the objection that it was also true that NC theory didn't add anything to LTV/LOV. It all depends where you start from ... = Nah, the big reason we all like Marx vis a vis NC GET etc. is that he saw Capitalism as a system of power and domination exercised via money, technology, property etc and that it contradicts everything we think we know about freedom, co-operation, beneficence and other human traits that make us potentially different from crocodiles. And in any case, LTV has the considerable technical merit over NC theory that it offers a non-circular method to measure the capital stock. It also gives some hope of an explanation of the empirical fact that increases in productivity do not, in general, lead to a shortening of the working day, which would be a prediction of utility theory given any sensible assumption about preferences regarding leisure. dd = As Blaug and others have pointed out, the LTV has circularities of it's own. Ian
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
The measurement of the capital stock is in impossibility. Franklin Fisher once worked up the requirements for aggregation. Can't be done! The inability to calculate real depreciation presents another barrier. I mentioned this in passing before in questioning how seriously we should take estimates of profit rates as anything more than a rough rule of thumb. On Wed, Feb 06, 2002 at 04:59:36PM -, Davies, Daniel wrote: I don't accept GET. I'm basically a Robinsonian/Kaleckian institutionalist with a large dash of Austrian thrown in for spice. Must make for some interesting dinner parties But I don't see how saying I'm an institutionalist gets you off the hook here. That's not a value theory, and neither Robinson nor Kalecki have either a way of telling us how to measure the capital stock without a value theory, or a value theory which is not fundamentally the equivalent of the LTV (I accept your point about a glass being half-empty or half full, but surely to heavens, any theory which accepts that value is only produced by labour is a labour theory of value; I've never understood why Robinson claimed that she didn't accept LTV). And in the context of capital and value theory , Austrian isn't a dash of spice; it's arsenic soup. It's a marginal theory of value, which hangs you right back on the hook that you got off with general equilibrium. I'm sure I don't understand your position properly, and I bet that reading those two papers will help. But I think it's clear that there are many good technical reasons to suppose that economics needs *some* value theory, and the labour theory of value shapes up pretty well compared to the competition. dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___ -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
The empirical equivalence thesis is part of Q-D, no? Wasn't meaning to suggest it was the whole shebang. I don't think so. It's verificationist. Q-D is not. jks As we've all been remiss in pointing out until now, the most powerful critique of Capital -- in the last decade at the very least -- makes no use whatsoever of value theory. What is missing from that book.Wall Street, that value theory would make substantive improvements on? well, we have it from very wise people that you can't begin to understand or explain capitalism without value theory, we're stucvk at the level of mere ecletic phenomenal static description. Sorry, Doug. jks _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
Re: Historical Materialism
CB: I don't think Marx and Engels fold all theory into ideology in the pejorative sense that they use it in _The German Ideology_ and elsewhere. So, that the theory of Marxism is not , paradoxically, unMarxist. So I argue in the paper. CB: Do you mean that we agree on this point ? That there is no real paradox ? Yes, that is correct. JKS: [In In Defense of Exploitation] I do use the term [value], after defining it. see the last sentence: Charles: I know you use it , but in order to discard it. Point me more specifically to your rationale for discarding its use. I see no logical, theoretical, or scientific reason to discard its use ,yet, in what you say. Marx argues very convincingly in _Capital+ that the concept of value is critical in explaining capital. You don't say anything that dissuades of Marx's argument. Can you give a summary of your most forceful argumentative points on that issue ? I don't in fact discard it in this paper; I assume it arguendo. My limited critique of it is published in What's Wrong with Exploitation, Nous 1995, also on line at the spoons archive. I have been discussing my objections in a thread that is jsut warpping up here. jks _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
Re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] ^^^ Haven't you shifted to a different issue ? You started saying that under Quine-Duhem underdetermination problem, the burden was on the proponents of the Marxist theory to demonstrate the indispensiblity of their theory. But doesn't Quine-Duham underdetermination deal with a situation in which both theories are valid and the evidence doesn't help in choosing between them ? If you are saying that Marx's value theory doesn't correspond to evidence or can't be tested, that is not a Quine-Duhem underdetermination problem , is it ? Charles === Q-D underdetermination asserts that if two theories are equivalent in their empirical entailments then some other criteria needs to be used to compare explanatory virtues etc. If the main results of the LTV and or the LoV whether in a quantitative-qualitative combination or relying singly on quantitative or qualitative approaches adds nothing to what can be achieved in terms of *explanation* without them, then why shouldn't Ockam's razor apply--to concepts, not entities? Especially if some want to say that the Value concept--polysemy alert-- has no empirical entailments? So does the Value concept have empirical entailments or not and what's the decision procedure for the determination? If we say it doesn't, then what explanatory work does it do? If we say it does then it seems to become even more problematic with regards to the multitude of LTV's in the quantitative version because they haven't even been shown to be equivalent in their empirical entailments; that should alert us to something being amiss with the network of assertions which not only facilitate the construction of the algorithms for determining the entailments, but the manner in which the concepts are defined. This assumes, of course, the plausibility of the analytic-synthetic distinction, an issue also still under dispute. If we take the qualitative route, then we have to determine whether or not the Value concept, both in the LTV mode and the LoV mode passes muster with --take your pick-- any of the causal theories of reference on offer. If we say that any of the causal theories of reference on offer don't pass muster in order to determine the validity of the Value concept, how do we avoid the idea of having achieved something akin to a Pyhrric victory given that dueling skepticisms don't facilitate the development of theories? Ian
Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
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. jks Oskar Lange used say that Marxian economics is the economics of capitalism and neoclassical economics is the economics of socialism. If you want to do monetary and fiscal policy, design an antitrust regime, figure out the impact of opening new oilfields on existing transportation options, make a plan for your own enterprise, you use subjectivist theory. They teach it in B school cause it works in short and medium term. I don't have to prove it: the proof is in the practice. I don't agree with this, and I've been to business school. The subjectivist value theory of neoclassical economics is the von Neumann/Morgenstern axioms, and they are completely orthogonal to the economics you learn at business school (you learn them quite thoroughly in an economics degree, but that's not the same thing). At business school, you learn in detail the parts of economics which are not dependent on a value theory and are more properly part of what one used to call operations research, plus you learn a bit of kiddies' (often surprisingly heterodox) macroeconomics under the title of International Financial System or some such. Think about it this way; almost the only module which is compulsory in every MBA at every business school is Marketing, and there is still, after about 150 years of trying, no decent classical or neoclassical theory of the advertising industry. Subjectivist value theory is honoured much more in the ignoring than the observance. dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___ _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
Re: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Justin, you keep reminding us of Oskar Lange's economics of socialism quote. He thought that General Equilibrium was a proof of the efficacy of market socialism. I don't want to debate market socialism -- we have worked that one over more than enough -- but his proof seems kind of silly to me. Phil Mirowski does a great job in his new book of showing how this approach easily slid into planning for the Pentagon by his disciples. On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 03:10:37PM +, Justin Schwartz wrote: 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. jks Oskar Lange used say that Marxian economics is the economics of capitalism and neoclassical economics is the economics of socialism. If you want to do monetary and fiscal policy, design an antitrust regime, figure out the impact of opening new oilfields on existing transportation options, make a plan for your own enterprise, you use subjectivist theory. They teach it in B school cause it works in short and medium term. I don't have to prove it: the proof is in the practice. I don't agree with this, and I've been to business school. The subjectivist value theory of neoclassical economics is the von Neumann/Morgenstern axioms, and they are completely orthogonal to the economics you learn at business school (you learn them quite thoroughly in an economics degree, but that's not the same thing). At business school, you learn in detail the parts of economics which are not dependent on a value theory and are more properly part of what one used to call operations research, plus you learn a bit of kiddies' (often surprisingly heterodox) macroeconomics under the title of International Financial System or some such. Think about it this way; almost the only module which is compulsory in every MBA at every business school is Marketing, and there is still, after about 150 years of trying, no decent classical or neoclassical theory of the advertising industry. Subjectivist value theory is honoured much more in the ignoring than the observance. dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___ _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Well this is in Ellman's book which you recommended earlier (Soviet Planning Today). It's the difference between economic cybernetics and political economy as set out by the Central Economic Mathematical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The first of these is what you learn in business school -- operations research, etc, etc and, as Kantorovich et al proved, can in general be derived without making any assumptions about values or preferences, as the outcome of a maximisation problem in control engineering. The second of these is what you have to learn to parrot in the approved manner, or you won't be allowed into business school. It's the question of what kind of thing goes into your model; whether you're going to assume that wage labour is a cost to be minimised, and whether you're going to measure your output by reference to monotonic, independent, transitive etc utility functions. The confusion between cybernetics and political economy (economics as engineering and economics as politics) is responsible for a lot of problems on both sides of (for example) the planning debate (Stalin was of the opinion that cybernetics was intrinsically bourgeois and beleived that plans should be made on the basis of purely political-economy considerations, with predictably disastrous consequences), and the issues dealt with in value theory economics are right on the cusp of the two approaches. But I disagree with you that Marx didn't think that the LTV was basically a statement about political economy (in the sense used above) and think that those people are correct who believe that to confine the importance of the LTV to technical discussions about the production and allocation of goods under capitalism is to reduce Marx to the status of a minor Ricardian. cheers dd -Original Message- From: Justin Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 04 February 2002 15:11 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:22310] Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism 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. jks Oskar Lange used say that Marxian economics is the economics of capitalism and neoclassical economics is the economics of socialism. If you want to do monetary and fiscal policy, design an antitrust regime, figure out the impact of opening new oilfields on existing transportation options, make a plan for your own enterprise, you use subjectivist theory. They teach it in B school cause it works in short and medium term. I don't have to prove it: the proof is in the practice. I don't agree with this, and I've been to business school. The subjectivist value theory of neoclassical economics is the von Neumann/Morgenstern axioms, and they are completely orthogonal to the economics you learn at business school (you learn them quite thoroughly in an economics degree, but that's not the same thing). At business school, you learn in detail the parts of economics which are not dependent on a value theory and are more properly part of what one used to call operations research, plus you learn a bit of kiddies' (often surprisingly heterodox) macroeconomics under the title of International Financial System or some such. Think about it this way; almost the only module which is compulsory in every MBA at every business school is Marketing, and there is still, after about 150 years of trying, no decent classical or neoclassical theory of the advertising industry. Subjectivist value theory is honoured much more in the ignoring than the observance. dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___ _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp. ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any
RE: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
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
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Justin, you keep reminding us of Oskar Lange's economics of socialism quote. He thought that General Equilibrium was a proof of the efficacy of market socialism. I don't want to debate market socialism -- we have worked that one over more than enough -- but his proof seems kind of silly to me. (a) He did not. This is a common myth. In The Economic Theory of Socialism defended central planning by shadow pricing. Later, after experiences as an actual planner, he became an advocate of market reform, but not via GET. (b) I don't endorse Lange's use of GET even in defense of planning by using his quip, which is just too good to let go. If I quote Tocqueville or Churchill or Machiavelli or Goering or even Perlman for an especially apt remark, I do not thereby buy into their total potical philosophies. I do not confine myself to quotinf only people I agree with, or I would never quote anyone. (c) Anyway, you know, or should by now, that ich bin ein echt Oesterreicher on these matters, not a Arrovian-Debreauvnik. I go with the Hayekian critique of GET. So you have to take the commebt in the spirit in which it was quoted, which is not for its literal truth. Chhez, you marxists are so humorless. Was looking at your Invention of Capitalism in the bookstore the other day, looks good, ; I will buy it, but right now I'm busy with other things. jks _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism
For a terrific study of the relation between economic sybernetics and modern economics, see Mirowski's new book, Machine Dreams. On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 03:25:17PM -, Davies, Daniel wrote: Well this is in Ellman's book which you recommended earlier (Soviet Planning Today). It's the difference between economic cybernetics and political economy as set out by the Central Economic Mathematical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The first of these is what you learn in business school -- operations research, etc, etc and, as Kantorovich et al proved, can in general be derived without making any assumptions about values or preferences, as the outcome of a maximisation problem in control engineering. The second of these is what you have to learn to parrot in the approved manner, or you won't be allowed into business school. It's the question of what kind of thing goes into your model; whether you're going to assume that wage labour is a cost to be minimised, and whether you're going to measure your output by reference to monotonic, independent, transitive etc utility functions. The confusion between cybernetics and political economy (economics as engineering and economics as politics) is responsible for a lot of problems on both sides of (for example) the planning debate (Stalin was of the opinion that cybernetics was intrinsically bourgeois and beleived that plans should be made on the basis of purely political-economy considerations, with predictably disastrous consequences), and the issues dealt with in value theory economics are right on the cusp of the two approaches. But I disagree with you that Marx didn't think that the LTV was basically a statement about political economy (in the sense used above) and think that those people are correct who believe that to confine the importance of the LTV to technical discussions about the production and allocation of goods under capitalism is to reduce Marx to the status of a minor Ricardian. cheers dd -Original Message- From: Justin Schwartz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 04 February 2002 15:11 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:22310] Re: RE: Re: Historical Materialism 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. jks Oskar Lange used say that Marxian economics is the economics of capitalism and neoclassical economics is the economics of socialism. If you want to do monetary and fiscal policy, design an antitrust regime, figure out the impact of opening new oilfields on existing transportation options, make a plan for your own enterprise, you use subjectivist theory. They teach it in B school cause it works in short and medium term. I don't have to prove it: the proof is in the practice. I don't agree with this, and I've been to business school. The subjectivist value theory of neoclassical economics is the von Neumann/Morgenstern axioms, and they are completely orthogonal to the economics you learn at business school (you learn them quite thoroughly in an economics degree, but that's not the same thing). At business school, you learn in detail the parts of economics which are not dependent on a value theory and are more properly part of what one used to call operations research, plus you learn a bit of kiddies' (often surprisingly heterodox) macroeconomics under the title of International Financial System or some such. Think about it this way; almost the only module which is compulsory in every MBA at every business school is Marketing, and there is still, after about 150 years of trying, no decent classical or neoclassical theory of the advertising industry. Subjectivist value theory is honoured much more in the ignoring than the observance. dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___ _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
Re: Historical Materialism
I said: However, I think I've made a tolerable start by showing how Marx's theory of exploitation, the core of Capital I, can be resttaed without the LTV (this in my two papers on exploitation), and by sketching how the theory of commodity fetishim, the core of Marx's mature theory of ideology, can also be statedwithout it (this in The Paradox of ideology). The papers are available on line, and I think you have copies, Charles. ^^^ So, since I put some years into doing that, the ball is now in your court to show how I have failed. ^ CB: Well, I'll take up the volley, although have commented repeatedly over the years of our exchange, for example on the equality/liberty issues. I got The Paradox of Ideology from you almost ten years ago now, Gaak, it is that, isn't it? One question I had on the paradox of ideology is that I don't think Marx and Engels fold all theory into ideology in the pejorative sense that they use it in _The German Ideology_ and elsewhere. So, that the theory of Marxism is not , paradoxically, unMarxist. So I argue in the paper. CB: Yes, I was trying to focus in on LTV in reading In Defense of Exploitation since it is a specific issue that came up here. For starters , in the following. it seems to me that it is true that since embodied socially necessary labor time is equivalent to value, one could substitute that phrase whenever Marx uses value, it might work, but why not have a single word for this central concept ? It's like force = mass x acceleration, but the theory doesn't improve by just using mass x acceleration instead of force. I do use the term,a fter defining it. see the last sentence: Roemer defines Marxian exploitation as the unequal exchange of labour for goods (1986b, 260). A worker is exploited if and only if the amount of labour embodied in the goods she can purchase with her wage is less than the labour she expended to earn the wage. A capitalist is an exploiter if and only if the amount of labour embodied in the goods he can sell is greater than that (if any) he expended to acquire these goods. The notion of 'embodied labour' derives from the LTV. A commodity 'embodies' an amount of labour in that its value is determined by the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. jks _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
Re: Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Ken Hanly [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 10:13 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22213] Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism I don't understand this stuff about the observational consequences of theories at the level of generality of the theory of value. What if the labor theory of value is part of the central core of Marxism ? If that is so then in itself it does not have any specific empirical implications period. Jim Devine seems to take a position of this sort in a piece on the web: Marx's goals for the LoV were to analyze the societal nature and laws of motion of the capitalism; another way of saying this is that the LoV summarizes the method of analysis that Marx applies in Capital. The LoV is part of what Imre Lakatos [1970] terms the hard core of tautologies and simplifying assumptions that is a necessary part of any research program.1 The quantitative aspect of value should be seen as a true-by-definition accounting framework to be used to break through the fetishism of commodities -- allowing the analysis of capitalism as a social system. Prices, the accounting framework most used by economists, both reflect existing social relations and distort their appearance. It is necessary to have an alternative to prices if one wants to understand what is going on behind the level of appearances: looking at what people do in production (i.e., labor, value) helps reveal the social relations between them. If this interpretation is correct then Quine-Duhem's stuff is irrelevant not that it makes much sense to me anyway. Seems like a neanderthal idea to speak of theories implying empirical consequences just like that without assumptions conditions etc. assumed: or of evidence straightforwardly supporting a theory. So the Quine-Duhem stuff is not relevant and even if it were why should it be given any particular weight? Is it any less dubious than the Marxian theory of value? Cheers, Ken Hanly Ok but then what's to stop such skepticism creep? What makes any theory non-dubious if not observational consequences? This puts of lot of theories on the same level as theology, no? Ian
Re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 12:39 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22240] Historical Materialism Historical Materialism by Ian Murray 01 February 2002 22:33 UTC Ok, but given the Quine-Duhem underdetermination problem-link below-is not the burden of proof for the indispensability of Marx's value theory on those who wish to retain it? Steve Fleetwood has an essay on this in a recent issue of Capital Class. Ian CB: Before you get to that, isn't the burden on you to demonstrate that the theory alternative to Marx's explains what Marx's theory does ? Justin and the AM's haven't quite proven that to everybody yet. = If Marx's value theory is axiomatic and purely analytic how can it explain? If the quantitative aspects of the theory are not capable of generating consistent derivations -whether inductive, abductive or deductive- from the abstractions that are the 'hard core', what's being explained? I'm not convinced that explanation=proof in non-quantitative social theory and it seems that too many have argued that explanation must = proof for their opponents yet don't apply this to their own formulations, so round and round we go, like theists and atheists. What we see from AM's are investigation of hypotheses that are in KM's corpus and thinking through the consequences. If those hypotheses don't hold up let them go; if they do, retain them. It's a matter of discussion as to whether the hypotheses that are discarded even need to be replaced. There's still a big Mirowskian-Klamerian project of investigating all the metaphors, similes etc., in the 'hard core' [metaphor alert] of Marx's work, no? Ian
RE: Historical Materialism
but the period 1917 -- 1939 was not one during which the cybernetics/Stalin debate occurred. There was no genuine science of economic cybernetics in this period; much of the mathematical toolkit had not been developed. dd -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 04 February 2002 20:57 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [PEN-L:22341] Historical Materialism Historical Materialism by Davies, Daniel 04 February 2002 15:30 UTC dd: (Stalin was of the opinion that cybernetics was intrinsically bourgeois and beleived that plans should be made on the basis of purely political-economy considerations, with predictably disastrous consequences), ^^ CB: I know that it is dogma on these lists that Stalin could do no right, but what exactly is your evidence that the economic history of the Soviet Union in Stalin's time was not an extraordinary historic achievement ? I believe Russia was about 1/13 the size of the U.S. economically before the 1917 Revolution. Post WWII , despite the extraordinary destruction of the Nazi invasion, the USSR reached ½ the U.S. GDP/GNP. That means it grew faster than the U.S. in the Stalin period. ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___
RE: Re: Historical Materialism
Oskar Lange used say that Marxian economics is the economics of capitalism and neoclassical economics is the economics of socialism. If you want to do monetary and fiscal policy, design an antitrust regime, figure out the impact of opening new oilfields on existing transportation options, make a plan for your own enterprise, you use subjectivist theory. They teach it in B school cause it works in short and medium term. I don't have to prove it: the proof is in the practice. I don't agree with this, and I've been to business school. The subjectivist value theory of neoclassical economics is the von Neumann/Morgenstern axioms, and they are completely orthogonal to the economics you learn at business school (you learn them quite thoroughly in an economics degree, but that's not the same thing). At business school, you learn in detail the parts of economics which are not dependent on a value theory and are more properly part of what one used to call operations research, plus you learn a bit of kiddies' (often surprisingly heterodox) macroeconomics under the title of International Financial System or some such. Think about it this way; almost the only module which is compulsory in every MBA at every business school is Marketing, and there is still, after about 150 years of trying, no decent classical or neoclassical theory of the advertising industry. Subjectivist value theory is honoured much more in the ignoring than the observance. dd ___ Email Disclaimer This communication is for the attention of the named recipient only and should not be passed on to any other person. Information relating to any company or security, is for information purposes only and should not be interpreted as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any security. The information on which this communication is based has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness. All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice. All e-mail messages, and associated attachments, are subject to interception and monitoring for lawful business purposes. ___
Re: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
I don't think that your example is quite correct although I understand your point. A hand-assembled Toyota would most likely be regarded as superior, command a higher price and represent a greater value than the Toyota that was mass produced using a great deal of automation. But assuming they did have the same value then you are correct the value or abstract socially necessary labor in both would be the same. However, I dont see how this counters my point. Let us say that Sam who hand builds Toyota's has to work twice as long as Sally who is in the automated factory to embody the same value i.e.abstract socially necessary labor time. Doesn't it follow that Sam's labor power is not equal in value to that of Sally? That is my point and it does seem to follow from the theory as far as I can see. A capitalist is not going to buy any Sam labor power when Sally labor power produces value at twice the rate of Sam. But maybe I don't understand what you are saying. Much of this is over my head. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Justin Schwartz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 10:09 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22211] Re: Re: Historical Materialism But SNALT implies that an hour of A's labor may not at all produce the same exchange value as an hour of B's labor. If the SN labor time to produce X widgets is one hour and A's labor does that but B's labor only produces half that number then in this context an hour of A's labor and of B's are not equal. No? The labor theory of value implies that the same hour of labor of different people is unequal qua its exchange value creation, not that each person's hour of labor produces equal value. Ken, you are leaving the abstractness and the social necessity of the labor out of SNALT. A hand-built Toyota contains excatly the same amount of ABSTRACT labor time that is socially necessary as a factory built one, although it takes much longer to make it, because from a social pov theextr atime is socially unnecessay and the labor involved is abstract or simple, unskilled labor. jks _ Join the world's largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
Jim writes: (2) no, Marx shows convincingly in volume III of CAPITAL that as long as (1) the rate of surplus-value is constant and uncorrelated with the OCC; (2) the OCC differs between industries; and (3) the rate of profit tends toward equality between sectors, prices gravitate toward prices of production (POPs) that differ from values. Maybe you're thinking of Ricardo, who saw exactly this kind of result from his analysis but assumed that the value/POP correlation was good enough for early 19th century British political economy work (embracing what historians of economic thought call the 98% labor theory of value [i.e., of price]). For Marx, the connection between prices and values is macroeconomic in nature, with total value = total price and total surplus-value = total property income, with the macro structure of accumulation limiting and shaping the microprocesses that make up that totality. (Charlie Andrews' recent book, FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY, is good on this.) I agree with the focus on totality here. but it is a peculiar focus, and I am going to make an outlandish guess as to why. By vol 3, Marx is nearing his descent to the concrete totality, yet Marx seems not interested in *individual* capitals even as he approaches them because any one individual capital does not yield--as a result of the variance in compositions--surplus value at the same rate as would the *typical particular* capitalist (that is, the prototype of or a perfect aliquot of the whole class; Meek links Marx's typical particular of a capital of average composition to Sraffa's standard commodity). In vol 3 Marx remains more interested in total surplus value produced by all the individual capitals, and it is only in terms of capital-as-a-whole that the total mass of surplus value can be defined, and the average rate of profit determined. Capital-as-a-whole is thus revealed to be itself a concrete unit with its own specific attributes. So even as Marx comes to appreciate fully individuality, as opposed to typical particularity, in the multiplicity of capitals, he is not ultimately interested in the the multiplicity or aggregate of individual capitals but with the concrete individual that is itself capital as a whole. Itself a concrete individual, capital-as-a-whole is thus not like say boats-as-a whole which is merely a *generalized concrete abstraction* for small open craft, ocean liners, battleships and and exchange carriers. In this latter case the members are of course more concrete than the abstract class. But in the case of capital-as-a-whole, the class itself has been concretized in that it alone has attributes that its members, as individuals *abstracted* from that class, do not. The capitalist *class* is not a not a mere plurality of capitals; it is itself a fairly concrete unit. I do not think we have here a fallacy of misplaced concreteness or an error of hypostatizing. Though I do not know whether I am making sense either. And it may be that the fault should be put on capitalist social relations, not those social scientists who reject methodological individualism which seems only to accord concreteness to members, not classes. Such a stricture may be illsuited for the very society that produces the standpoint of the individualist. rakesh
RE: Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
thanks. I needed that. -- Jim Devine Ken Hanly writes: I don't understand this stuff about the observational consequences of theories at the level of generality of the theory of value. What if the labor theory of value is part of the central core of Marxism ? If that is so then in itself it does not have any specific empirical implications period. Jim Devine seems to take a position of this sort in a piece on the web: Marx's goals for the LoV were to analyze the societal nature and laws of motion of the capitalism; another way of saying this is that the LoV summarizes the method of analysis that Marx applies in Capital. The LoV is part of what Imre Lakatos [1970] terms the hard core of tautologies and simplifying assumptions that is a necessary part of any research program.1 The quantitative aspect of value should be seen as a true-by-definition accounting framework to be used to break through the fetishism of commodities -- allowing the analysis of capitalism as a social system. Prices, the accounting framework most used by economists, both reflect existing social relations and distort their appearance. It is necessary to have an alternative to prices if one wants to understand what is going on behind the level of appearances: looking at what people do in production (i.e., labor, value) helps reveal the social relations between them. If this interpretation is correct then Quine-Duhem's stuff is irrelevant not that it makes much sense to me anyway. Seems like a neanderthal idea to speak of theories implying empirical consequences just like that without assumptions conditions etc. assumed: or of evidence straightforwardly supporting a theory. So the Quine-Duhem stuff is not relevant and even if it were why should it be given any particular weight? Is it any less dubious than the Marxian theory of value? Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 4:27 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22192] Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 2:11 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22191] RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism Ian quotes Joan Robinson: The awkwardness of reckoning in terms of values, while commodities and labor power are constantly changing in values, accounts for much of the obscurity of Marx's exposition, and none of the important ideas he expresses in terms of the conceptof value cannot be better expressed without it. I don't think the obscurity of Marx's writing (which is supposed to be pretty easy to read as German theoretical writing goes) is due to his use of values. Instead it's because he doesn't do what modern writers do, i.e., say this is what I'm going to say first; then I'll talk about this, etc., explaining the level of abstraction and stuff like that (i.e. assumptions) at each stage. Instead he plays at being Hegel and starts out very abstract (the Commodity in General) and becomes progressively more concrete without explaining the logic of his presentation (even though his analysis does make sense). (Charlie Andrews' recent book follows Marx on value theory, but has a much better presentation.) As a logical process, the ratio of profits to wages for each individual commodity, can be calculated when the rate of profit is known. The transformation is from prices into values, not the other way. this is what's been called the Steedman critique, though obviously Robinson thought of it first. It's at the center of Analytic Marxism. I think it's based on a misunderstanding of Marx's project, the facile assumption that Marx was a minor post-Ricardian who was first and foremost interested in price theory and distribution theory. Jim Devine Ok, but given the Quine-Duhem underdetermination problem-link below-is not the burden of proof for the indispensability of Marx's value theory on those who wish to retain it? Steve Fleetwood has an essay on this in a recent issue of Capital Class. Ian ** UNDERDETERMINATION Empirical equivalence Two theories T1 and T2 are empirically equivalent if every observational consequence of T1 is also an observational consequence of T2. e.g. curved space-time vs. flat space-time plus forces solar system at rest vs. solar system moves with uniform rectilinear velocity v Underdetermination and Scepticism If T1 and T2 are empirically equivalent, every possible piece of evidence that supports T1 will also support T2. The evidence underdetermines our choice between T1 or T2. How do we decide which of T1 and T2 is true? Note This problem only arises where there are empirically equivalent theories. http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dfl0www/modules/scikandr/ROHP.HTM
Re: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
on 2/2/02 07:55 PM, Rakesh Bhandari at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jim writes: (2) no, Marx shows convincingly in volume III of CAPITAL that as long as (1) the rate of surplus-value is constant and uncorrelated with the OCC; (2) the OCC differs between industries; and (3) the rate of profit tends toward equality between sectors, prices gravitate toward prices of production (POPs) that differ from values. Maybe you're thinking of Ricardo, who saw exactly this kind of result from his analysis but assumed that the value/POP correlation was "good enough for early 19th century British political economy work" (embracing what historians of economic thought call the 98% labor theory of value [i.e., of price]). For Marx, the connection between prices and values is macroeconomic in nature, with total value = total price and total surplus-value = total property income, with the macro structure of accumulation limiting and shaping the microprocesses that make up that totality. (Charlie Andrews' recent book, FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY, is good on this.) I agree with the focus on totality here. but it is a peculiar focus, and I am going to make an outlandish guess as to why. By vol 3, Marx is nearing his descent to the concrete totality, yet Marx seems not interested in *individual* capitals even as he approaches them because any one individual capital does not yield--as a result of the variance in compositions--surplus value at the same rate as would the *typical particular* capitalist (that is, the prototype of or a perfect aliquot of the whole class; Meek links Marx's typical particular of a capital of average composition to Sraffa's standard commodity). In vol 3 Marx remains more interested in total surplus value produced by all the individual capitals, and it is only in terms of capital-as-a-whole that the total mass of surplus value can be defined, and the average rate of profit determined. Capital-as-a-whole is thus revealed to be itself a concrete unit with its own specific attributes. So even as Marx comes to appreciate fully individuality, as opposed to typical particularity, in the multiplicity of capitals, he is not ultimately interested in the the multiplicity or aggregate of individual capitals but with the concrete individual that is itself capital as a whole. Itself a concrete individual, capital-as-a-whole is thus not like say boats-as-a whole which is merely a *generalized concrete abstraction* for small open craft, ocean liners, battleships and and exchange carriers. In this latter case the members are of course more concrete than the abstract class. But in the case of capital-as-a-whole, the class itself has been concretized in that it alone has attributes that its members, as individuals *abstracted* from that class, do not. The capitalist *class* is not a not a mere plurality of capitals; it is itself a fairly concrete unit. I do not think we have here a fallacy of misplaced concreteness or an error of hypostatizing. Though I do not know whether I am making sense either. And it may be that the fault should be put on capitalist social relations, not those social scientists who reject methodological individualism which seems only to accord concreteness to members, not classes. Such a stricture may be illsuited for the very society that produces the standpoint of the individualist. rakesh SIr Rakesh Bhandari In "Capital" Marx distinguish buyer-seller relation from class relation Below is this. True, in the act M---L the owner of money and the owner of labour-power enter only into the relation of buyer and seller, confront one another only as money-owner and commodity-owner. In this respect they enter merely into a money-relation. Yet at the same time the buyer appears also from the outset in the capacity of an owner of means of production, which are the material conditions for the productive expenditure of labour-power by its owner. In other words, these means of production are in opposition to the owner of the labour-power, being property of another. On the other hand the seller of labour faces its buyer as labour-power of another which must be made to do his bidding, must be integrated into his capital, in order that it may really become productive capital. The class relation between capitalist and wage-laborer therefore exists, is presupposed from the moment the two face each other in the act M---L (L---M on the part of the laborer). It is a purchase and sale, a money-relation, but a purchase and sale in which the buyer is assumed to be a capitalist and the seller a wage-laborer. And this relation arises out of the fact that the conditions required for the realisation of labour-power, viz., means of subsistence and means of production, are separated from the owner of labour-power, being the property of another.
Re: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
Jim writes: (2) no, Marx shows convincingly in volume III of CAPITAL that as long as (1) the rate of surplus-value is constant and uncorrelated with the OCC; (2) the OCC differs between industries; and (3) the rate of profit tends toward equality between sectors, prices gravitate toward prices of production (POPs) that differ from values. Maybe you're thinking of Ricardo, who saw exactly this kind of result from his analysis but assumed that the value/POP correlation was good enough for early 19th century British political economy work (embracing what historians of economic thought call the 98% labor theory of value [i.e., of price]). For Marx, the connection between prices and values is macroeconomic in nature, with total value = total price and total surplus-value = total property income, with the macro structure of accumulation limiting and shaping the microprocesses that make up that totality. (Charlie Andrews' recent book, FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY, is good on this.) I agree with the focus on totality here. but it is a peculiar focus, and I am going to make an outlandish guess as to why. I just want to add a simple point here which echoes Yoshie's point from the capitalist point of view, and I think it says better what I was trying to say very early this morning. For Marx, only once one has discoverd the average rate of profit for capital-as-a-whole can one discover the limits to the profit that any one capitalist can make. No matter whether an individual capitalist beats off the fall in the average rate of profit at the expense of other capitals, the fall in the average rate for the capitalist class can plunge the system into the crisis. As GA Cohen may put it: that the only a few can fit through the escape door (micro) before it shuts can only be clarified by understanding the situation of the capitalist class itself (macro). Despite the strictures of methodological individualism, it seems to me quite precisely accurate to speak of the fate of the supra-individual entity of capital, which again is itself a concrete individual unlike say a generalized concreted abstraction like boats-as-a-whole (row boats, aircraft carriers, tugboats). rb
Re: Historical Materialism
CB: Before you get to that, isn't the burden on you to demonstrate that the theory alternative to Marx's explains what Marx's theory does ? Justin and the AM's haven't quite proven that to everybody yet. Well, Marx and Engels collected writings are 50 volumes. However, I think I've made a tolerable start by showing how Marx's theory of exploitation, the core of Capital I, can be resttaed without the LTV (this in my two papers on exploitation), and by sketching how the theory of commodity fetishim, the core of Marx's mature theory of ideology, can also be statedwithout it (this in The Paradox of ideology). The papers are available on line, and I think you have copies, Charles. So, since I put some years into doing that, the ball is now in your court to show how I have failed. Btw, for crisuis theory and the rest of the main line of Capital, see Daniel Little, The Scientific Marx. Robert Brenner's book The Turbulent Economy does the same with crisis theory. I will say, too, that in many years of explaining Marx to students and others, I have never had to rely onthe LTV for any core point; I mean, I'd try to explain it and explain Marx's thinking, but then I'd restate it without the LTV. I still don't understandwhat I'm supposed to me missing. (Sorry, Jim; I've read your papers too, and remains opaque to me). jks _ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
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I don't think that your example is quite correct although I understand your point. A hand-assembled Toyota would most likely be regarded as superior, command a higher price and represent a greater value than the Toyota that was mass produced using a great deal of automation. My example assumes that the finished products are identical, or near enough. There are real world examples all the time, such as with the machine looms that laid waste to the handlooms of India and England. The hand looms took longer to make the same cloth, but the value of the product dropped preciptously, because the extra time was no longer socially necessary. But assuming they did have the same value then you are correct the value or abstract socially necessary labor in both would be the same. However, I dont see how this counters my point. Let us say that Sam who hand builds Toyota's has to work twice as long as Sally who is in the automated factory to embody the same value i.e.abstract socially necessary labor time. Doesn't it follow that Sam's labor power is not equal in value to that of Sally? This is not a well-formed question. The value of labor power is the wage necesasry to reproduce the worker, not the amount of time he must work to produce the product. You confuse here the value of the product with the value of the producer's labor time. The value of the product is a certain amount (the socially necessary part) of the labor time necessary to produce the commodity. That is my point and it does seem to follow from the theory as far as I can see. A capitalist is not going to buy any Sam labor power when Sally labor power produces value at twice the rate of Sam. Quite right. Ask the hand loom weavers. So what's your point? jks _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
Re: Historical Materialism
CB: What would be the advantage of formulating [exploitation theory] without Marx's way of formulating it , or Engels' way ? ^ Making it clearer, getting it right, avoiding ambiguities, problems, and objections with their versions. I want to say this respectfully, but I think it is slanderous or insult without foundation to characterize those who adhere more strictly to Marx and Engels position in the law of value debate with AM as religiously fundamentalist . I didn't do that, but there are those who think that Marx wrote it, I believe it, and that settles it! I'm sure you've met some. Louis' Marxism list is full of 'em. As far as I am concerned it is like claiming that any physicist or biologist who adhere's closely to Einstein or Darwin's positions is being worshipfully religious. Horseshit ! Fundamentalism is an attitude. A biologist or physicist may be F about Darwin or Einstein if she insista on using the original texts (most biologists have physicists have never read Origin of Species or the 1905, etc. papers on relativity theory), reject any variation from those formulae, treat any objections as wrong in advance, hand on the the ideas even in the face of severe predictive and explanatory failures and the degenerating utility of certain approaches . . . . Einstein was a fundamentalist about determinism, he didn't care hwo good quantum theory looked; Mach about atomism. Anyway, me, I'm not an AM, I don't even call myself a Marxist. But I do think the AMs had the right attitude of total irreverence towards classics. Marx deserves our respectful attention, and should get the scientific criticism he said he welcomed. jks _ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp.
re: Historical Materialism
[I sent this to Justin -- and not the list as a whole -- by mistake. The e-mail program at my office works one way and the one at home another!] Justin writes: However, I argued that it [Marx's theory of exploitation] did not require the labor theory of value in Marx's canonical formulation to state it. More generally, the point is that capitalism is exploitative, a point that _can_ be put without reference to any theory of value at all--Roemer has an argument to this effect. I think that Roemer's version loses a lot of the point of Marx's socological analysis, which, as I say, can be maintained without holding that labor creates all value or that price is proportional to value understood as socially necessary abstract labor time. Marx didn't say that price is proportional to value. As is pretty clear if you read all three volumes of the damn book, in volume I of CAPITAL, he _assumed_ such proportionality in order to break through the fetishism of commodities, to reveal the macro- and micro-sociology of exploitation. (Trading at value is a standard of equal exchange, in some ways like an assumption of perfect competition for modern orthodox economists (MOEs).) Marx did this without assuming that sociology can be separated from economics the way orthodox social science assumes; to think that one can dump Marx's economics without his sociology seems naive at best. In fact one of his major points is that the economy is one part of society, so that economics is a form of sociology (i.e., social relations). That's what all that stuff in volumes I and III about commodity fetishism and the illusions created by competition -- to my mind the heart of Marx's law of value -- is about. As for labor creating all value, that's a matter of definition. There's some tautology in the theory, akin the tautology that Roemer embraces from orthodox economics, i.e., individuals are rational utility maximizers. As Sweezy said in his commentary on the Bohm-Bawerk/Hilferding debate, the difference is that by using value, Marx starts with the notion that people live in a society, working together in an interconnected whole, whereas B-W, the Austrian school, and the MOEs (not to mention the LARRYs and CURLYs) start with the notion that people are isolated individuals and don't get further than that, getting stuck in Thatcher-land. I spent a lot of time reading and struggling to understand Roemer's theory of exploitation, BTW. As far as I could tell, it was Henry George's or George Bernard Shaw's theory of scarcity rent as exploitation, duded up with math so that people thought it was more profound than it was. And it's not true that he didn't use a theory of value: Roemer used the Walrasian theory of value in most of his work, along with some silly game theory. (The Walrasian theory, for those who don't know, assumes that the totality of society is held together by a god-like Auctioneer, or some equally silly assumption.) It's possible that the theory of capitalist exploitation could be done without reference to value (I did something like this in a book that Bill Dugger edited, called INEQUALITY or something like that), but value is in the background. (People use philosophy, methodology, etc. without knowing it.) Marx was speaking the language of the time, working with Ricardian-classical economics (and criticizing it). (Unfortunately, this led all sorts of people to mistakenly think that Marx was a Ricardian.) If he had started with neoclassical economics (like Roemer), I'm afraid, he would have had a much much harder time understanding the world. Roemer, as far as I can tell, was able to develop a theory of exploitation only because he knew that Marx had done so -- and then only did a half-assed job, because he was blinded by the institutional power of neoclassical economics (it's the MOEs that grant tenure promotion) and the romance of mathematical rigor. He misses the social relations of capitalist domination, both in society and in the workplace. I will add that Jim and Chris B have cast amniadversions on the reductionism of classical analytical Marxism, which has largely been abandoned by its founders (Erik Olin Wright excepted, also Alan Carling). As far as I could tell from previous debates on the subject, the only way to define analytical Marxism without it being simply all Marxism that makes sense is to have it be reductionist _by definition_, so that by rejecting reductionism they were rejecting analytical Marxism. But the points I am making do not require reductionism of any sort. What remains of AM--and it does survive in places like the journal Historical Materialism--is an emphasis on clarity, precision, explicitness, and rigorous standardss of argument, along with a totally unworshipful attitude towards traditional formulations or classic texts. These are worth preserving. Of course, all of these nice adjectives also apply to Rudolph Hilferding, Harry Braverman, Paul Sweezy, Louis Althusser, and
re: re: Historical Materialism
The following is (1) Justin's reply to what I said in the message I just forwarded to pen-l, plus (2) my reply to him. -- Jim Devine I originally said: Marx didn't say that price is proportional to value. As is pretty clear if you read all three volumes of the damn book, (1) Justin responded: Uh, Jim, you suggesting that I haven't? (2) no: I never aim messages simply at the person to whom I am responding. It's aimed at all of the pen-l list. (Even when I'm coresponding with another individual, I ask what would a third observer say?) BTW, I wish everyone on pen-l would follow this practice, because it helps avoid personal insults. in volume I of CAPITAL, he _assumed_ such proportionality in order to break through the fetishism of commodities, to reveal the macro- and micro-sociology of exploitation. (Trading at value is a standard of equal exchange, in some ways like an assumption of perfect competition for modern orthodox economists (MOEs).) (1) Maybe we are not talking the same language. I do not mean by saying that Marx holds that prices are prop, to value that commodities trade at value, just that there is a function that takes you from value to prices, and that this function is statistically true, that is--that over the long run he thinks prices will tend to fluctuate around values, moreover, that values explain price levels. Surely he believed that! (2) no, Marx shows convincingly in volume III of CAPITAL that as long as (1) the rate of surplus-value is constant and uncorrelated with the OCC; (2) the OCC differs between industries; and (3) the rate of profit tends toward equality between sectors, prices gravitate toward prices of production (POPs) that differ from values. Maybe you're thinking of Ricardo, who saw exactly this kind of result from his analysis but assumed that the value/POP correlation was good enough for early 19th century British political economy work (embracing what historians of economic thought call the 98% labor theory of value [i.e., of price]). For Marx, the connection between prices and values is macroeconomic in nature, with total value = total price and total surplus-value = total property income, with the macro structure of accumulation limiting and shaping the microprocesses that make up that totality. (Charlie Andrews' recent book, FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY, is good on this.) BTW, later on in volume III, Marx is very clear that individual participants in the capitalist system don't give a shite about values or surplus-value. They see prices, profits, interest, rent, etc., what he sees as superficial representations of value and surplus-value. As for labor creating all value, that's a matter of definition. (1) Agreed, but definitions can be better or worse. (2) Definitions are always part and parcel of a theory, defined relative to other parts of the theory, as with the Newtonian force equation of physics: force = mass*acceleration. Each of the terms is defined by the other two. This says that better or worse have to be seen in terms of the theory as a whole. I spent a lot of time reading and struggling to understand Roemer's theory of exploitation, BTW. As far as I could tell, it was Henry George's or George Bernard Shaw's theory of scarcity rent as exploitation, duded up with math so that people thought it was more profound than it was. (1) I also spent a lot of time on it, learned from your work too. (2) Good. Do you agree that Roemer attempts a shot-gun marriage between neoclassical orthodoxy and Marxian theory, one that ultimately fails? And it's not true that he didn't use a theory of value: Roemer used the Walrasian theory of value in most of his work, along with some silly game theory. (1) I didn't say R didn't use a theory of value. In this context value theory is the LTV. (2) why is that? who sets the context? the long tradition of writings on the so-called labor theory of value (what I would call the law of value following Marx or the labor theory of property for clarity's sake) has contrasted the objective theory of value of Ricardo and Marx with the subjective theory of value of the neoclassicals, Austrians, etc. (cf., e.g., John Strachey's THEORY OF CAPITALIST CRISIS, 1935). I don't really like that distinction, so I would differentiate labor theories of property (Locke, Marx) from labor theories of price (Smith, Ricardo) and scarcity theories of price (the MOEs). But I think that the old tradition of seeing a theory of value as the philosophical/methodological moment or means of analytical entry makes a lot of sense. The MOE theory of value that Roemer embraces -- or embraced, since he's retreated into purely normative analysis -- is that prices _are_ values, so that only what Marx called the surface of society (supply, demand, non-market institutions, property rights, and the like) counts. It's possible that the theory of capitalist exploitation could be done without reference to value (I did something like this...), but
RE: Re: Re: Historical Materialism
dd writes: Out of interest, what's wrong with the labour theory of value [LTV]? Do the AMs [analytical Marxists] have an alternative theory of value, or do you try to get along without one? Feel free to not answer if it would take more labour than is worth bothering with. A central question is: what in heck do we mean by a labor theory of value? by a theory of value? If those terms are clearly defined, a lot of silly debating disappears. To my mind, Marx did not have a labor theory of value the way Ricardo did, i.e., a theory aimed at explaining prices by reference to assumedly pre-existing values. Marx was not a price theorist but a political economist. Rather, with John Locke, Marx had what I call a labor theory of property (though obviously, Locke's theory is different from Marx's). Modern orthodox economics -- embraced by folks such as Roemer and some or all AMs -- embrace a scarcity theory of price, based on a philosophical/methodological basis of individualism. Crucial to their theory of value is the assumption that the word value can only be interpreted as meaning price. jks writes: I don't want to get into this in great detail, but here's the short version. What's called the LTV has two meanings. The [loose] meaning, intended by most people, is the vulgar version, that labor is the only source of value, which Marx accepts, this ignores the issue of what's meant by value. I believe that for Marx, it has the following kind of meaning: since he views all societies as essentially communities of workers (and perhaps non-workers), the value of a product represents the contribution of its producer to the community as a whole, from the perspective of the community. (Price would be from the perspective of individual participants in the system.) In this perspective, labor is value, as judged from the perspective of the society (that's the socially-necessary part of SNALT). (The term SNALT should not evoke Gesundheit! it refers to socially-necessary abstract labor time.) but not in the sense used by most of its adherents, who think that the vulgar version implies taht workers are entitled, morally, to the value that their labor is the source of. Marx was not interested in claims of justice and would have regarded the labor theory of property underlying this argument as so much ideology. The vulgar version is wrong in any case because there is no reason to deny that there may be many factors, including subjective ones (demand) that go into value. Marx is pretty clear at the beginning of volume I of CAPITAL that if there's no demand for a commodity, the labor that goes into it doesn't produce value. The strict version, used by Marx, holds that price is roughly proportional to socially necessary abstract labor time. This faces the famous transformation problem, roughly that there is no nice way to [mathematically] turn labor values into prices. Marx's own solution is fatally falwed,a s is universally acknowledged. Borktiwiesz developed a mathemaeticall adequate solution (expalined simply by Sweezy in The Theory of Cap Dev.), but the conditions under which it holds are so special and unrealistic taht it is doubtful that the model has much applicability--you have to assume constant returns to scale, no alternative production methods, etc. In addition there is the neoRicardan critique (Sraffa and Steedman, arrived at independently by Samuelson) onw hich labor valuesa rea fifth wheel: we can compute them from wages and technical input, and under especial conditions establish a proportionality to prices, but you can get the prices directly from the other factors, so why bother with the labor values? As I said before, Marx did not believe that price is roughly proportional to socially abstract labor time. In terms of the idea posited above that value is the contribution of an individual producer to the community as a whole (as evaluated by that community), it's important to remember that for Marx, capitalism is an alienated community. Thus, there is no presumption on his part (except as a simplifying assumption in volume I of CAPITAL and under that mythical system called simple commodity production) that individual contributions to the whole (values) are always proportional to the society's rewards to an individual (exchange-values, prices). Further, if values were always (or always tended toward being) proportional to exchange-values or prices, the nature of the economic system would be much more transparent: neither commodity fetishism nor the illusions created by competition would be important. Finally, there's the point that is key to my mind, which is that the theory have proved fruitless. There is a minor industry of defending the LTV, but the fact is that no one has done any interesting work using the theory for over 100 years. Of course, there's a minor industry _debunking_ the so-called LTV, so that the two industries form a predator/prey relationship. In many ways, both sides of
Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] (1) Maybe we are not talking the same language. I do not mean by saying that Marx holds that prices are prop, to value that commodities trade at value, just that there is a function that takes you from value to prices, and that this function is statistically true, that is--that over the long run he thinks prices will tend to fluctuate around values, moreover, that values explain price levels. Surely he believed that! (2) no, Marx shows convincingly in volume III of CAPITAL that as long as (1) the rate of surplus-value is constant and uncorrelated with the OCC; (2) the OCC differs between industries; and (3) the rate of profit tends toward equality between sectors, prices gravitate toward prices of production (POPs) that differ from values. Maybe you're thinking of Ricardo, who saw exactly this kind of result from his analysis but assumed that the value/POP correlation was good enough for early 19th century British political economy work (embracing what historians of economic thought call the 98% labor theory of value [i.e., of price]). For Marx, the connection between prices and values is macroeconomic in nature, with total value = total price and total surplus-value = total property income, with the macro structure of accumulation limiting and shaping the microprocesses that make up that totality. (Charlie Andrews' recent book, FROM CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY, is good on this.) BTW, later on in volume III, Marx is very clear that individual participants in the capitalist system don't give a shite about values or surplus-value. They see prices, profits, interest, rent, etc., what he sees as superficial representations of value and surplus-value. = The awkwardness of reckoning in terms of values, while commodities and labor power are constantly changing in values, accounts for much of the obscurity of Marx's exposition, and none of the important ideas he expresses in terms of the conceptof value cannot be better expressed without it. As a logical process, the ratio of profits to wages for each individual commodity, can be calculated when the rate of profit is known. The transformation is from prices into values, not the other way. Joan Robinson Comments? Ian
RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
Ian quotes Joan Robinson: The awkwardness of reckoning in terms of values, while commodities and labor power are constantly changing in values, accounts for much of the obscurity of Marx's exposition, and none of the important ideas he expresses in terms of the conceptof value cannot be better expressed without it. I don't think the obscurity of Marx's writing (which is supposed to be pretty easy to read as German theoretical writing goes) is due to his use of values. Instead it's because he doesn't do what modern writers do, i.e., say this is what I'm going to say first; then I'll talk about this, etc., explaining the level of abstraction and stuff like that (i.e. assumptions) at each stage. Instead he plays at being Hegel and starts out very abstract (the Commodity in General) and becomes progressively more concrete without explaining the logic of his presentation (even though his analysis does make sense). (Charlie Andrews' recent book follows Marx on value theory, but has a much better presentation.) As a logical process, the ratio of profits to wages for each individual commodity, can be calculated when the rate of profit is known. The transformation is from prices into values, not the other way. this is what's been called the Steedman critique, though obviously Robinson thought of it first. It's at the center of Analytic Marxism. I think it's based on a misunderstanding of Marx's project, the facile assumption that Marx was a minor post-Ricardian who was first and foremost interested in price theory and distribution theory. Jim Devine
Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
- Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 2:11 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22191] RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism Ian quotes Joan Robinson: The awkwardness of reckoning in terms of values, while commodities and labor power are constantly changing in values, accounts for much of the obscurity of Marx's exposition, and none of the important ideas he expresses in terms of the conceptof value cannot be better expressed without it. I don't think the obscurity of Marx's writing (which is supposed to be pretty easy to read as German theoretical writing goes) is due to his use of values. Instead it's because he doesn't do what modern writers do, i.e., say this is what I'm going to say first; then I'll talk about this, etc., explaining the level of abstraction and stuff like that (i.e. assumptions) at each stage. Instead he plays at being Hegel and starts out very abstract (the Commodity in General) and becomes progressively more concrete without explaining the logic of his presentation (even though his analysis does make sense). (Charlie Andrews' recent book follows Marx on value theory, but has a much better presentation.) As a logical process, the ratio of profits to wages for each individual commodity, can be calculated when the rate of profit is known. The transformation is from prices into values, not the other way. this is what's been called the Steedman critique, though obviously Robinson thought of it first. It's at the center of Analytic Marxism. I think it's based on a misunderstanding of Marx's project, the facile assumption that Marx was a minor post-Ricardian who was first and foremost interested in price theory and distribution theory. Jim Devine Ok, but given the Quine-Duhem underdetermination problem-link below-is not the burden of proof for the indispensability of Marx's value theory on those who wish to retain it? Steve Fleetwood has an essay on this in a recent issue of Capital Class. Ian ** UNDERDETERMINATION Empirical equivalence Two theories T1 and T2 are empirically equivalent if every observational consequence of T1 is also an observational consequence of T2. e.g. curved space-time vs. flat space-time plus forces solar system at rest vs. solar system moves with uniform rectilinear velocity v Underdetermination and Scepticism If T1 and T2 are empirically equivalent, every possible piece of evidence that supports T1 will also support T2. The evidence underdetermines our choice between T1 or T2. How do we decide which of T1 and T2 is true? Note This problem only arises where there are empirically equivalent theories. http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dfl0www/modules/scikandr/ROHP.HTM
Re: Historical Materialism
Justin: clip...The vulgar version is wrong in any case because there is no reason to deny that there may be many factors, including subjective ones (demand) that go into value. ^^ CB: This suggests lack of understanding of Marx's analytical distinction between use-value and exchange-value ( value). Demand or want and its subjective source compose use-value, which does not impact the labor theory of value, or law of value. As MArx exaplins it himself in CI, value is whatever it is about useful things that enables them to explain at more or less stable ratios. That might be lots of things--he says, what else could it be but labor (time)? But in fact desirability is another feature, and there may be others. Obviously a two factor theory is not the tradituonal LTV, but I reject the traditional LTV. That is a disagreement, not a lack of undferstanding. ^^^ Justin: Finally, there's the point that is key to my mind, which is that the theory have proved fruitless. CB: Says you. The LTV is a key component of the science founded in _Capital_. It seems an analyticist style error to detach the LTV from the entire ( whole) theory of Marx.. _Capital_ has born much fruit in theoretical political economy. Some of the better known works are by Lenin, Luxemburg, Sweezy, Perlo, Perelman..etc., etc.,etc. And of course _Capital_ has proved extraordinarily more fruitful in practice, in actually changing the world, than most theories ( any other theories ). I think that every important proposition of Marx, including the theory of commodity fetishism, the fact of exploitation, the allegedfalling rate of profit, the recurrence of crisis, etc. can be stated without the LTV. I was in the business of explaining Marx to student sfor 15 years, and I found I had to translate it out of LTVese and into English to get the ideas across. So, I embrace this analyticist error with fervor. The LTV is obsolete obscurantism,a nd moreover I think that Mrx doesn't even hold it--i explain why (briefly), in What's Wrong With Exploitation, Nous 1995, on the net also,w hich reconstructs exploitation theory without the LTV. As to the practical successes you attribute to Capital, insofaras the experience of fomerly existing communsim can bea ttributed to Capital, it wasn't a great success--but we have been through that recently; and I actually agree with Gramsci who called the Russian Revolution the Revolution Against Capitsl, he meant in a double sense, because it wasa aginst capitalism and against the traditional idea in Capital that revolution required a high level of development. I think that formeraly existing communsim has not much to do with Capital. CB: This implies that neo-classical subjectivist theory has proven fruitful in a way that Marx's theory hasn't. You haven't adduced evidence of that here. Oskar Lange used say that Marxian economics is the economics of capitalism and neoclassical economics is the economics of socialism. If you want to do monetary and fiscal policy, design an antitrust regime, figure out the impact of opening new oilfields on existing transportation options, make a plan for your own enterprise, you use subjectivist theory. They teach it in B school cause it works in short and medium term. I don't have to prove it: the proof is in the practice. jks _ Send and receive Hotmail on your mobile device: http://mobile.msn.com
Re: Historical Materialism
But SNALT implies that an hour of A's labor may not at all produce the same exchange value as an hour of B's labor. If the SN labor time to produce X widgets is one hour and A's labor does that but B's labor only produces half that number then in this context an hour of A's labor and of B's are not equal. No? The labor theory of value implies that the same hour of labor of different people is unequal qua its exchange value creation, not that each person's hour of labor produces equal value. Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 1:30 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22176] Historical Materialism Historical Materialism by Davies, Daniel 01 February 2002 16:01 UTC Why? The question is, what work does this alleged quantity do? I agree that LTV talk is useful heuristic way to saying that there's exploitation. But we can say that without LTV talk, that is, without denying that there are other sources of value than labor or that SNALT does not provide a useful measure of a significant quantity. I would have thought that a more important reason for trying to hang onto the LTV is that it embodies a fundamental egalitarian principle; if we believe that my life is equally as valuable as your life, then an hour of my life must be worth the same as an hour of your life, and I think that this ends up implying something like the LTV. dd ^^^ CB: Yes, and in a related idea, there is a principle of seeming inherent human sense of equality underlying Engels and Marx historical materialist first principle that the history of exploitative class society is the history of exploited and oppressed classes struggling against their oppression and exploitation.
Re: Re: Historical Materialism
But SNALT implies that an hour of A's labor may not at all produce the same exchange value as an hour of B's labor. If the SN labor time to produce X widgets is one hour and A's labor does that but B's labor only produces half that number then in this context an hour of A's labor and of B's are not equal. No? The labor theory of value implies that the same hour of labor of different people is unequal qua its exchange value creation, not that each person's hour of labor produces equal value. Ken, you are leaving the abstractness and the social necessity of the labor out of SNALT. A hand-built Toyota contains excatly the same amount of ABSTRACT labor time that is socially necessary as a factory built one, although it takes much longer to make it, because from a social pov theextr atime is socially unnecessay and the labor involved is abstract or simple, unskilled labor. jks _ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com
Re: Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism
I don't understand this stuff about the observational consequences of theories at the level of generality of the theory of value. What if the labor theory of value is part of the central core of Marxism ? If that is so then in itself it does not have any specific empirical implications period. Jim Devine seems to take a position of this sort in a piece on the web: Marx's goals for the LoV were to analyze the societal nature and laws of motion of the capitalism; another way of saying this is that the LoV summarizes the method of analysis that Marx applies in Capital. The LoV is part of what Imre Lakatos [1970] terms the hard core of tautologies and simplifying assumptions that is a necessary part of any research program.1 The quantitative aspect of value should be seen as a true-by-definition accounting framework to be used to break through the fetishism of commodities -- allowing the analysis of capitalism as a social system. Prices, the accounting framework most used by economists, both reflect existing social relations and distort their appearance. It is necessary to have an alternative to prices if one wants to understand what is going on behind the level of appearances: looking at what people do in production (i.e., labor, value) helps reveal the social relations between them. If this interpretation is correct then Quine-Duhem's stuff is irrelevant not that it makes much sense to me anyway. Seems like a neanderthal idea to speak of theories implying empirical consequences just like that without assumptions conditions etc. assumed: or of evidence straightforwardly supporting a theory. So the Quine-Duhem stuff is not relevant and even if it were why should it be given any particular weight? Is it any less dubious than the Marxian theory of value? Cheers, Ken Hanly - Original Message - From: Ian Murray [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 4:27 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22192] Re: RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism - Original Message - From: Devine, James [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, February 01, 2002 2:11 PM Subject: [PEN-L:22191] RE: Re: re: re: Historical Materialism Ian quotes Joan Robinson: The awkwardness of reckoning in terms of values, while commodities and labor power are constantly changing in values, accounts for much of the obscurity of Marx's exposition, and none of the important ideas he expresses in terms of the conceptof value cannot be better expressed without it. I don't think the obscurity of Marx's writing (which is supposed to be pretty easy to read as German theoretical writing goes) is due to his use of values. Instead it's because he doesn't do what modern writers do, i.e., say this is what I'm going to say first; then I'll talk about this, etc., explaining the level of abstraction and stuff like that (i.e. assumptions) at each stage. Instead he plays at being Hegel and starts out very abstract (the Commodity in General) and becomes progressively more concrete without explaining the logic of his presentation (even though his analysis does make sense). (Charlie Andrews' recent book follows Marx on value theory, but has a much better presentation.) As a logical process, the ratio of profits to wages for each individual commodity, can be calculated when the rate of profit is known. The transformation is from prices into values, not the other way. this is what's been called the Steedman critique, though obviously Robinson thought of it first. It's at the center of Analytic Marxism. I think it's based on a misunderstanding of Marx's project, the facile assumption that Marx was a minor post-Ricardian who was first and foremost interested in price theory and distribution theory. Jim Devine Ok, but given the Quine-Duhem underdetermination problem-link below-is not the burden of proof for the indispensability of Marx's value theory on those who wish to retain it? Steve Fleetwood has an essay on this in a recent issue of Capital Class. Ian ** UNDERDETERMINATION Empirical equivalence Two theories T1 and T2 are empirically equivalent if every observational consequence of T1 is also an observational consequence of T2. e.g. curved space-time vs. flat space-time plus forces solar system at rest vs. solar system moves with uniform rectilinear velocity v Underdetermination and Scepticism If T1 and T2 are empirically equivalent, every possible piece of evidence that supports T1 will also support T2. The evidence underdetermines our choice between T1 or T2. How do we decide which of T1 and T2 is true? Note This problem only arises where there are empirically equivalent theories. http://www.dur.ac.uk/~dfl0www/modules/scikandr/ROHP.HTM
