[OPE-L:3484] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: measurement of value

[Paul Cockshott <wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 11:25 11/06/00 -0400, you wrote:
> So this delimitation of the category of commodity, which I agree that Marx
> accepts upon initial analysis, does not answer the specific question. I am
> saying that if we don't pinpoint successful market exchange as the point
> that goods acquire value, then not only would we have to consider
> inventories as already having acquired value but also (and why not?)
> production that is not even intended to be sold on the market (say the govt
> using tax money to hire workers in a transportation dept to build
> roads--have these roads too acquired value?)

Yes, but they only aquire exchange value if the government sells them off.


>  Market exchange is the source of value.
>
> "whenever by an exchange we equate as values our different products, by
> that very act, we also equate as human labor the different kinds of labor
> expended on them."

The quote does not say the same thing as your summary above.
It says that when exchanging we equate the labours embodied. Value
is embodied labour, thus when we are exchanging we are equating
values. The labour was human labour prior to its product being exchanged.

Marx's criticism of Ricardo is that he did not explain why abstract human
labour had to appear as exchange value rather than directly as amounts
of labour. I.E., he took the historically limited form of representation of
value in capitalist society as given.

 Ajit wrote
> >You need to ask one
> >question to yourself, and may be your Hegelian friends, does Marx have a
> >theory of
> >demand?

You do not really reply to this. Quoting somebody else as saying that
demand in capitalist society stems from accumulation - a disputable
thesis anyway - does not answer the question as to where in Capital
is the chapter on demand. Ajit was saying that if Marx thought that demand
was crucial to the determination of value he would hardly have overlooked
an explicit examination of it. Those economists who do think that demand
is crucial to the determination of value attempt to construct a theory of it.
Marx did not.