Re: [OPE-L] Lawrence Krader on objective and subjective value

[ajit sinha <sinha_a99@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Jurriaan Bendien <adsl675281@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> But I think, in contrast to Sombart, it would be
> more correct to describe Marx's theory of economic
> value as a "materialist" theory in the epistemic
> sense of the word, i.e. a theory which explains the
> ideas about value and their history in terms of the
> real, practical relations between people that give
> rise to those ideas.
...
> In Das Kapital, as Isaac I. Rubin emphasized, Marx
> indeed explicitly tries to explain why the
> categories of value present themselves they way they
> do in human consciousness generally, and in the
> consciousness of businessmen and the political
> economists in particular. Marx refers specifically
> for example to the reifying effects of market
> relations, in terms of "commodity fetishism", "the
> illusions of competition" which invert the real
> concatenation of events, and the "holy trinity" of
> value-creation. He notes also that "In bourgeois
> societies the economic fictio juris prevails, that
> every one, as a buyer, possesses an encyclopedic
> knowledge of commodities." (note 5)
________________________
If Marx was not God, and I doubt that he was, then how
could his ideas on value scape his own critique? The
problem is that Marx is not only presenting a master
strategy of critique from the perspective of which
nothing is solid and all the ideas of everything melts
away in the changing historicity. There are apparently
two things that remain solid throughout: One is the
ideas Marx has about things (which includes value) and
the master strategy itself. But this contradicts the
master strategy. Both the master strategy as well as
Marx's ideas about value and capitalism etc. are
product of a historically situated man's brain. If an
Adam Smith or a Ricardo cannot scape their historical
limitations then so does Marx. Rubin shows how
Marxists turn Marx into God. Cheers, ajit sinha


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