[OPE-L] Real prices and ideal prices

[Jurriaan Bendien <adsl675281@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Jerry,

You queried me once on the distinction between ideal prices and real prices.
I've just written a simple wiki about it here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_prices_and_ideal_prices

My personal opinion, which I have not (yet) defended in an scholarly article
however, is that in discussing the forms of value, Marx paid insufficient
attention to the "price form". Very radically, he mostly disregards the
whole exciting hustle and bustle of buying and selling, and wheeling and
dealing in markets, concentrating instead on the global *results* to which
the process would tend. But really there is of course much more to price
theory, and as I said before, I think that if you inquire further into the
epistemology and social ontology of prices, you can find a powerful proof
there for the necessity of a theory of economic value... if rational
economic actors exercising utility preferences are rational, their
valuations are not arbitrary and random but systematic, as well as being
objectifed in transactions.

Jurriaan