RE: Re: theoretical soup

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

I wrote:
>> If I remember correctly, Robinson interpreted Marx's law of value as a
Ricardian labor theory of price. Given that assumption (i.e., that the point
of values was to explain price), _of course_ she should have  rejected it.
That's an important reason to reject that misinterpretation, the basis of
almost all criticisms of Marx's heuristic. (Weirdly, that  misinterpretation
is shared both by most critics of Marx's law of value and also by many
"fundamentalists." They then feed each others' misconceptions.)<<

Ian writes:
> So KM set lot's of folks on a Humean constant conjunction
> wild goose chase with:<<

please explain what in heck "a Humean constant conjunction wild goose chase"
is and why it is relevant. Then maybe I can figure out how the long quote
from Marx fits within that rubric. Without an explanation, it sounds as if
you're simply making fun of Marx for having a different theoretical
framework than yours (or for having a theoretical framework at all).

Jim Devine

the quote from Marx (vol. I, chapter 3, on money):
> Magnitude of value expresses a relation of social production, it expresses
the connexion that  necessarily exists between a certain article and the
portion  of the total labour-time of society required to produce it. As soon
as magnitude of value is converted into price, the above necessary relation
takes the shape of a more or less accidental exchange-ratio between a single
commodity and another, the money-commodity. But this exchange-ratio may
express either the real magnitude of that commodity's value, or the quantity
of gold deviating from that value, for which, according to circumstances, it
may be parted with. The possibility, therefore, of quantitative incongruity
between price and magnitude of value, or the deviation of the former from
the latter, is inherent in the price-form itself. This is no defect, but, on
the contrary, admirably adapts the price-form to a mode of production whose
inherent laws impose themselves only as the mean of apparently lawless
irregularities that compensate one another.

> The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the possibility of a
quantitative incongruity between magnitude of value and price, i.e., between
the former and its expression in money, but it may also conceal a
qualitative inconsistency, so much so, that, although money is nothing but
the value-form of commodities, price ceases altogether to express value.
Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour,
&c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders, and of thus
acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities. Hence an object may
have a price without having value. The price in that case is imaginary, like
certain quantities in mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary
price-form may  sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real
value-relation; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which is
without value, because no human labour has been incorporated in it.<