LTV defense, digression

[Allin Cottrell <cottrell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

LTV defense: interim responses
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1.  There are still a few more instalments of my "LTV defense" to
come, before the whole structure -- or at least a sketch of it -- is "on
the table" for criticism.  Nonetheless, it would be churlish to plough
(plow) ahead without regard to comments received, so in this note I
break off to indicate briefly the sort of answers I would have to the
points raised by Mike Lebowitz and Steve Keen.

2.  Both Mike and Steve are concerned, though in different ways, that
I am not making enough of a distinction between Marx's theory of
value (MTV) as such and the LTV, considered as a theory that was
(very broadly) shared by Smith, Ricardo and Marx.  Mike's focus is
on abstract versus concrete labor; Steve's is on Marx's conception of
use-value.  A few words on these points in turn.

3.  Yes, the distinction between abstract and concrete labor is
essential to MTV; but it is strongly implicit in any LTV.  Ricardo
proposes that "commodities derive their exchangeable value from . . .
the quantity of labour required to obtain them."  To render this
meaningful, we must be able, in principle if not in practice, to quantify
the labor required to obtain any given commodity.  But one can't add
up hours of baking labor, spinning labor, mining labor, etc. (i.e.
specific concrete labors), unless one conceives of these as just various
instances of human labor in general (i.e. abstract labor).  Marx was
clearer and more explicit on this, to be sure, but I don't see the
concrete labor/abstract labor distinction as something that Ricardo
would have objected to; rather, he seems to have taken it for granted.

4.  I think it is a serious mistake, however, to go on to say (as Mike
does) that abstract, socially-necessary labor-time is something that is
manifest or measurable *only in the market prices of commodities*.
This is to render the LTV empirically vacuous.  If the LTV (or MTV)
is to have any empirical content, one must suppose that although one
cannot *identify* the actual clocked labor-content of any given
commodity with its abstract, socially-necessary labor-content,
nonetheless market competition ensures that these two magnitudes do
not diverge to an arbitrary extent.  And if one is dealing with large
collections of specific commodities (as when using an input-output
matrix with around 100 sectors, as Paul Cockshott and I were in our
empirical work), it is reasonable to take clocked labor-content as a
measure of Marx's "substance of value."

5.  Steve Keen seems to reckon that I'm underplaying the importance
of use-value in MTV.  His main point, made by reference to Marx's
notes on Adolf Wagner and to Rosdolsky, relates to the special use-
value of *labor-power*, namely its ability to contribute more labor
time to the production process than is embodied in its payment.  Well,
this is obviously of great importance to Marx's theory of exploitation -
- which I'm just about to get to in my sequence of postings -- but I
don't see it as inconsistent with anything I have said to date.

6.  More generally, what distinguishes MTV from LTV?  I would say
that MTV is LTV set in a particular theoretical and political context; it
is LTV developed into a theory of exploitation and a critique of
capitalism, something foreign to both Smith and Ricardo.  To achieve
this development, Marx had to distinguish very clearly between labor
the activity and labor-power the commodity: I reckon that is the key
conceptual advance over Ricardo.  MTV is also in a sense LTV
generalized -- a hint of this can be found in the Marx quotation at the
end of my last posting (LTV defense, part 8).  That is, the exchange of
commodities at prices roughly proportional to socially-necessary labor
content is conceived by Marx as the specific manifestation, under
capitalism, of the "necessity of the distribution of social labour in
specific proportions" in order to satisfy the conditions of reproduction
of any economic formation.

==========================
Allin Cottrell
Department of Economics
Wake Forest University
cottrell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(910) 759-5762
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