RE: Law of value

["Michael Lebowitz" <mlebowit@xxxxxx>]

In Message Fri, 25 Mar 1994 11:54:22 -0800,
  wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Paul Cockshott) writes:

>Jim Devine makes reference to Marx's Law of Value.
>
>I am not sure that Marx had a Law of Value. It is certainly part of
>the language of Orthodox Marxism, one finds reference to it in
>Stalin's Economic Problems of Socialism, and in some passages by
>Engels, but it seems to be missing from from Capital I, though
>I suspect that the phrase is used once or twice in Capital III.
>

    A very brief comment. (I intend to get back to comment on
Allin's LTV--- and his reply to me--- as soon as I can.) One place
Marx talks about the law of value is in Capital, I, Ch. 14, S4
("The Division of Labour in Manufacture, and the Division of Labour
in Society"): "the law of value of commodities ultimately determines
how much of its disposable labour-time society can expend on each kind of
commodity."(Vintage,476). It's quite consistent with his explanation
for Kugelmann (7/11/68) of how "the form in which this [necessary]
proportional distribution of labour asserts itself, in a state of society
where the interconnection of social labour is manifested in the *private
exchange* of the individual products of labour, is precisely the
*exchange value* of these products..."
      cheers,
       mike
Mike Lebowitz, Economics Dept.,Simon Fraser University
              Burnaby,B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
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