Re: Re: Charlie Andrews' book

[Jim Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> >  One advantage he has compared to Marx is that he makes it clear from
> > the beginning that exchange value is not the same as value. "The
> > magnitude of value is the quantity of abstract labor required to
> > _produce_ a commodity. The magnitude of exchange value, or price, is the
> > amount of abstract labor a commodity _obtains in exchange_. The value of
> > a commodity and its exchange value are both quantities of abstract
> > labor, but not necessarily equal quantities." (p. 34, emphasis added.)
>
> That is brilliant.

true. But, to toot my own horn, I had a similar insight in my article "The
Utility of Value: the 'New Solution,' Unequal Exchange, and Crisis" in
_Research in Political Economy_ (vol. 12, 1990, Paul Zarembka, ed.)

Whereas Charlie produces the above from careful study of Marx's _Capital_,
vol. I, I came to my view by coming in "the back door" (from the academic
literature). (Charlie must be conscious of this literature, too, but
thankfully he avoids referring to it.) I had studied Marx at length, but
was a bit confused by the early parts of _Capital_. I started with an
immense frustration with the literature about the so-called "transformation
problem," in which people (Paul Sweezy,  Ronald Meek, _ad infinitum_) did
all sorts of mathematical manipulation showing various formulae for the
relationship between "prices" and "values" -- while somehow losing sight of
what the point of the exercise was. People like Samuelson and Steedman
indirectly pointed to the sterility of this effort, while not pointing to
the solution. There seemed to be a basic assumption that individual prices
(exchange values) _should_ be equal to individual values, à la David
Ricardo. But reading _Capital_, the deviation between prices and values
seemed to be as important as their (macrosocietal) connection. After all,
if each price equaled each value, then a lot of the societal nature of
capitalism would be crystal-clear. Most of the force would be taken out of
commodity fetishism (vol. I) and the illusions created by competition (vol.
III). Luckily, the Duménil/Foley "new solution" to the transformation
problem is very simple and allowed the exposition of this point. I'm not
wedded to that solution, BTW: it seems to me that Fred Moseley's
alternative (see the most recent issue of the _Review of Radical Political
Economics_) allows a simple understanding of the relationship between
prices and values, with similar benefits.

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine