Re: Value - Justin and clarifications

[Justin Schwartz <jschwart@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 7 Jun 1995, Chris Burford wrote:

> chimney sweeps :).  But it is a serious problem if someone like Sraffa
> is quoted repeatedly to authenticate a view that the central concept of
> Marx's critique of capital is wrong.

Well, there can be differences on what the central concept is. I think
it's exploitation, and flies without the LTV.

On this list it matters if Justin
> often comments apparently fluently and tolerably sanely

A backhanded (left-handed?) compliment? I'm only mad north by northwest. I
know a hawk from a handsaw.

on many
> applications of Marx's ideas, and yet comfortably also maintains a
> pointed distance from this theory.
>
> Yet, (and I confirmed the figures of the ILO report with a campaigns
> offficer of the British Trades Union Council) 30% of the worlds
> population is either unemployed or underemployed, but there is not
> enough capital in in the world for everyone to be constructively
> productive.  Migration and racism are mounting. There is massive
> suffering, and even risk to the continued existence of the biosphere
> and to human life as we know it. Why let the central theoretical core
> of Marx's economic critique lie in disrespect, unused?
>
A non sequiter. The world is fucked up. Capitalism sucks donkey dicks. It
doesn't follow that Marx was right about value. (If, as everyone on this
list but me thinks, he held rather than merely used the LTV.)
 >
>
jks: > I'm quite aware that for Marx value is an aggregate notion which
plays a
> long term role; moreover that the type of labor costs involved are
> expressed in terms of socially necessary abstract labor time.
>
cb: > That clarification is useful. My concern is that I read a previous
> formula as apparently deriving value from prices,

Wha? Possibly vice versa, or Marx thought so. But the other way around?
What would be the point?

 rather than
> value being manifested in prices. (The distinction looks petty if you
> are not interested in the laws of motion of the economy.)
>
> I do not feel I really know Justin's disagreement and his theory of
> the economy,

I don't have one. A theory, that is.

 and would not want to challenge his right
> to hold them. My concern is how Marx is reinterpreted today.
>
Mee too, in part. Though I';d like a theory.
>
Cb: > Many factors conspire to make Sraffa appear authoritative, and the
> net effect is damaging.
>
Yeah, like the fact that he derives deductively valid results which show
that prices can be calculated on the basis of wage data and technical
production conditions without references to values. This is a _theorem_.
Its significance is debatable, like any theorem. But its validity is not.

> I would like to hear Sraffa's negative account.

Gee, didn't Steve Keen publish a nice account of Sraffa for the list? Or
was that pen-l? I'll ask him to post it to Marxism.

Sraffa's book is out of
> print and unavailable in London, (I have just realised that the PoCbmoC
> is not an algebraic formula or a typo but the title I have been seeking!)
> Can you help?

With the title--I can't provide the book--The Production of Commodities by
Means of Commodities. It's  out of print!? Really!? That's a disgrace.
Good accounts and discussions are to be found in Steedman, Marx After Sraffa.
 >
--Justin Schwartz




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