Re: Re: LOV and LTV

["Justin Schwartz" <jkschw@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> But Justin, do you accept that what you criticise as being redundant some
> of us would merely call a labor theory of prices?

Not merely. Marx attemptedto use value theory to do a lot of work, e.g., as
part od a theory of crisis, as a component of his account of commodity
fetishism, as an account of the nature of money, and, of course, as the
explanation of profit, exploitation, surplus value, and the rate of these
things. However, he correctly started from the premises that to do this
work, value had to be quantity with a determinable magnitude, and price is
the point of entry into that because value "appears" as price and profit in
the phenonemal world. If value theory breaks down there, it's toast, as Marx
also recognized, which is why he and Engels and traditional Marxism were
concerned with the transformation problem. In these respect he was more
intellectually honest that the latter-day defenders of value theory who want
the "quantity" without being able to determine its measure.

> And from the perspective of it being an expanation of exploitation, some of
> us would say that childen notice there are grossly unfair and inexplicable
> differences in society.

Unlike me, right? I think that all the inequalities that exist are just
great. But here you depart from Marxism: "Unfair" is a charge he would
dismissa sa  bourgeois whine. As a liberal democrat, I myself think he was
wrong about that--I think justice talk is very important--but I find it odd
that you insist on orthodoxy in political economy while rejecting Marx's
ideologiekritik of morality in general and talk of justice and fairness in
particular.

Finally, I don't understand why you think you can't explain inequality with
value theory. Here's Roemer['s explanation: the bourgeoisie grabbed the
means of production by force or acquired them by luck, and used their
ill-gotten resources to maintain their unfair advantages. Not a whisper of
value, and so far as it goes a perfectly true, and indeed Marxian
explanation.

Some of us would say that the marxian theory
> of
> value is much bigger than an explanation of exploitation.
>
> Without being persuaded by us, do you acknowedge that such different
> perspectives exist?

Do you mean, do I recognize that you persist in error? Yes.

jks

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