New Book on Value

[Drewk <Andrew_Kliman@xxxxxxx>]

The New Value Controversy

and the Foundations of Economics

edited by Alan Freeman, Andrew Kliman and Julian Wells

February 2004, Edward Elgar Publishing, 352 pp, £69.95 or $110

17 papers + editors' introduction, IWGVT Scholarship Guidelines, bibliography, and index

Contributors:  Paresh Chattopadhyay, Edward B. Chilcote, W. Paul Cockshott, Paul Cooney, Allin F. Cottrell, Ann Davis, Massimo De Angelis, Alan Freeman, Rebecca Kalmans, Andrew Kliman, David Laibman, Ted McGlone, Stavros D. Mavroudeas, Fred Moseley, Michael Perelman, Alejandro Ramos Martinez, Bruce Roberts, Mario L. Robles-Baez, and Julian Wells
 

See below for

*  excerpts from editors' introduction and book jacket

*  what Rob Garnett, Fred Lee, Bertell Ollman, Barkley Rosser, and Rick Wolff think of this book

*  ordering information

 

 

 

From the book jacket 

 

This sequel to Marx and Non-Equilibrium Economics introduces the key advances in modern value theory.  Leading authors with contrasting theoretical viewpoints debate equilibrium and non-equilibrium approaches, abstract labour and money, and provide an invaluable introduction to the rapidly growing body of new work in these fields. 

The authors cover cutting-edge topics in value theory including gender and money, crisis theory, the impact of technology, skilled and complex labour, and the effect of international transfers of value.

All of the papers in The New Value Controversy and the Foundations of Economics concentrate on new research.  The mathematical content is minimal, allowing both active researchers and new students to introduce themselves to the burgeoning critical reappraisal of the foundations of Twentieth Century economic thinking.

 

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Endorsements

"Marxian value theory has experienced a new surge of interest, interpretations, and dispute since the end of the Cold War.  A considerable amount of this dispute has centered on the Temporal Single-System Interpretation (TSSI).  This volume brings together in one place most of the leading participants in these discussions, ... [providing] comprehensive coverage of this debate ....  This is clearly the definitive volume on controversies over Marxian value theory available at this time."

-- J. Barkley Rosser, Jr., James Madison University, USA

"This book assembles - in an impressively undogmatic and theoretically self-conscious way - an excellent set of mutually engaged articles.  Well chosen to highlight the central claims and debates surrounding them, the articles document the dramatic recent renewal of Marxian value theories, extend them provocatively to important issues, and thereby effectively challenge Marxian economics' censorious exclusion from the academic mainstream."

-- Richard D. Wolff, University of Massachusetts, USA

"This rich set of essays breathes new life into Marxian economics by demonstrating the range and veracity of Marx's theory of value as well as a steadfast commitment to open dialogue and fair-minded debate on these fundamental issues.  As practiced here, value theory is a vehicle for rigorous analysis and conversation within and across paradigms.  This alone is an enormous contribution to heterodox economics and to contemporary economics at large, where questions of value are enduringly central yet rarely discussed in a cogent and pluralistic manner."

-- Robert F. Garnett, Texas Christian University, USA

"A well focused debate over the key issue in Marx's economics by some of the world's leading Marxist economists.  I can't think of a better way (or work) to introduce students to the intricacies of Marx's value theory and the controversies it has spawned.  Highly recommended!"

-- Bertell Ollman, New York University, USA 

 

"This volume promotes an open dialogue between the Temporal Single-System (TSS) versus the traditional-Sraffian interpretation of Marx's labor theory of value. ...  It is by moving towards a critical Marxist pluralism, the editors believe, that Marxist scholarship will be lifted from its current hidebound stupor.  Questioning tradition and providing the basis of an alternative, The New Value Controversy and the Foundations of Economics is a book that all heterodox economists should read."

--  Frederic S. Lee, University of Missouri, Kansas City, USA

 

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From the editors' introduction

 

The papers in this volume represent the first response by Marxist scholars to the Temporal Single-System Interpretation (TSSI) of Marx?s value theory. The TSS interpretation is controversial because it challenges a prior consensus within Marxist scholarship. It confirms the logical coherence of Marx?s theoretical results without ?correcting? or replacing Marx?s own presentation of his own views.

 

By any objective standard, the significance of these findings is enormous. The charge of inconsistency is a central pivot of the suppression of Marx by mainstream economics. Without it, no rational basis for excluding his work remains.

The alleged inconsistencies or incoherencies that have provided economics its justification for the rejection of Marx?s legacy are not present in his own writings. They arise instead from a theory which, although almost invariably portrayed within Marxian economics as ?Marx?s theory of value?, is actually a distinct theory in its own right. Its major founders and exponents include Dmitriev, Bortkiewicz, Sweezy, Seton, Okishio, Morishima, Shaikh, Steedman, and Laibman, among others.

One may of course develop any theory and call it ?Marxist?, but what (if anything) the theory tells us about Marx is a different matter.

Given that the findings of TSSI research call mainstream economics into question in so fundamental a way, it might have been expected that Marxist Economists would welcome them. Not so: TSSI authors first challenged the alleged proofs of inconsistency in Marx?s value theory in the early 1980s. Since that time, mainstream Marxian (and Sraffian) economics have consistently greeted TSSI research with scepticism, incredulity, and opposition.

Critical evaluation is of course welcome; the problem is that no such response was forthcoming. The interpretation was ignored and excluded by Marxists just as economics ignores and excludes Marx.

Yet now that the TSSI has nevertheless started to become known, some of its Marxist and Sraffian critics have entered into a debate of sorts with its proponents. It is, however, a rather curious debate, since the critics neither disprove the TSSI refutations of the alleged proofs that Marx?s theory is inconsistent, nor acknowledge that the proofs are false. Inasmuch as these alleged proofs constitute the sole justification for the near-total exclusion of Marx?s own work within economics, the critics? avoidance of the issue serves to perpetuate that exclusion.

Sraffian critics of the TSSI are hence perfectly entitled to continue working within their own paradigm. They cannot however defend the assertion that Marx?s own value theory is internally inconsistent (much less that the inconsistencies have been proven), nor that their own work constitutes a correction of his errors, without first having faced squarely the proposed disproofs of these claims and the evidence on which these disproofs are based.

Articles based on alternative interpretations continue to be rejected ? even by journals of radical political economics ? on the grounds that their theoretical framework and results differ from those of the received Bortkiewicz-Sweezy-Steedman interpretation. Attempts to challenge such editorial standards have been met with great hostility. As has sadly been the case in the past, therefore, the Marxists themselves have played as substantial a role in the suppression of Marx?s own ideas as have their non-Marxist opponents.

Attempting to forge a new, non-dogmatic kind of discourse, proponents of the TSSI began to restructure their own conferences ? the annual mini-conferences of the International Working Group on Value Theory (IWGVT). The suppression of Marx by mainstream economics created an uneasy association by default. Scholars flocked to conferences organised to promote a research programme different from their own ? a research programme in which a good many of them were uninterested and to which some of them evinced outright hostility ? because in effect there was nowhere else to go.

The mini-conference organisers had to decide what to do. They could have tacitly excluded contributions that did not address their concerns. Or they could have organised quite large conferences in which the great majority of participants not only disagreed with their views, but also declined to engage their research. Neither of these options were attractive, however, so they searched for an alternative.

The watchword of the conferences became engagement. It was not enough, TSSI authors argued, to set out each theory on its market stall and leave the reader to shop around. It was necessary also to read, and respond to, the alternatives to one?s theory.

The IWGVT organisers formulated guidelines in an attempt to try to create conditions in which alternative theories and interpretations engage with one another, and in which the validity of theories is judged in terms of their empirical success, rather than in terms of their conformity with the accepted conceptual framework and methodological norms. This represents a marked departure from the common practice of economics, including Marxian economics.

The invitation to engage in a pluralistic but critical dialogue was met by Marxist economists with various degrees of scepticism, ranging from bewilderment to rejection.

The final section of the book contains a series of contributions illustrative of the wide range of issues discussed during IWGVT conferences. The articles in this section were not in general responses to the new approaches to value and did not engage them. We have included them because it makes the volume a snapshot of the state of a Marxist scholarship at a turning point in its history.

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