DJP
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Young Master Smeet wrote:Actually, I would say the opposite, goods only sell at their value by accident, and Marx was wrong, total prices don’t equal total values (and, I suspect it would be the case that a good deal of value goes unrealised as price). I think value is more like a sort of gravity for prices, which aere subject to other forces as well.
Interesting. I would agree that for an individual commodity, price = value only by accident, I think Marx would have said this?’Value’ is expressed in terms of socially necessary labour-time, ‘exchange-value’ in price. Socially necessary labour time is determined through the mechanism of market exchange. If capital fails to become valorised, i.e expanded in production, it is because it has not been invested in socially necessary avenues.In Marx total value = total price is true by definition. To say something else is to depart from what Marx said, which would mean having to use a completely different analysis.The above is as much a question as a statement.
The thing is, though it’s probably only important if you want to be an ultra-geek, as far as I know, Marx never used the term ‘labour theory of value’ to refer to his theories.Marx didn’t set out to come up with a theory to explain the individual prices of commodities (though his theory does this) but a theory to explain how labour is regulated in a capitalist exchange economy.A lot of introductions to Marx say that he said that the price of individual commodities gravitate towards there value (socially necessary labour time) equivalent but I don’t think this is necessarily the case. All Marx said was that total value equals total price and that value and surplus value is distributed between capitalists through the competitive struggle for profits.In Capital 1 Marx, to illustrate that value is created in production and not exchange, presumes that price equals value. In the later volumes this presumption is dropped to explain the workings of the market and competition.
Hopefully this article is of interest. It’s all about the difference between value and exchange value which often gets blurred in secondary texts.http://libcom.org/files/kliman.pdf
Also worth watching is ‘Das Mudpie’http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/law-of-value-3-das-mudpie/
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:Value is not defined by the quantity of work (one could put a lot of work to destroy his house but it would be a negative value!), it is defined by how much importance an individual puts on a good to achieve his own preferences. Value is not intrinsic but subjective, that’s why people exchange things (work against money for instance)and how they get wealthier. To create wealth you need division of labour and voluntary exchanges.In Marx, ‘Value’ relates to the amount of reproducable socially necessary labour-time embodied in the commodity. In this sense ‘value’ is not subjective but intrinsic. The trouble is, as with all words, in a different context it can mean a completely different thing.I recently read this blog post which I thought was quite good: http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/value-cant-be-created-in-exchange/Or you could watch this rather excellent video: http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/video/marx-and-economics’The labour theory of value’ is something that really belongs to Smith and Ricardo, not Marx.
robbo203 wrote:There is a difference , as I am sure you realise, between an organisation whose purpose is specifically to combat religious ideas and a political party whose purpose is to help transform society . If you are expecting the latter to depend on a majority becoming convinced atheists you will be waiting foreverThe thing is our current policy does not stop people with a religious persuasion carrying on socialist activity outside the party, after all we have always claimed that it is not the SPGB itself that will bring about socialism but the working class as a whole.If any members have strong enough feelings about changing from the present set up they are free to raise the issue, but as I have not seen anything about religion on the last few years conference agendas it appears that there isn’t much enthusiasm to do so.So that’s pretty much end of story. I could go on, but really I’d be wasting time.
Robin, can you point me to the queue of religous belivers that are waiting to join the SPGB?I think you’ll find it only exists in your imagination.
http://www.the9billion.com/2011/03/24/death-rate-from-nuclear-power-vs-coal/I may be playing devils advocate here but it seems to me that nuclear power is far from our biggest concern.
But CO2 and soot emissions from coal burning also seem fairly non-containable.To be honest I haven’t made my mind up on this one; I haven’t studied the subject well enough.
Here’s a podcast from the ICC on their theory of the decadence of capitalismhttp://en.internationalism.org/podcast/201202/4692/capitalism-decadent
alanjjohnstone wrote:Banks Are Not MysticalOf related interest, a debate between NYT Paul Krugman and Australian economist Steve Keen and others on money/credit supply. Is it the Fed or is it the banksThe answer to some extent depends on what measure of the money supply you are refering to.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supplySometimes people end up talking at cross purposes because they are referring to different things when they use the word ‘money’As far as I’ve got it worked out, the level of the broad money supply is determined by the amount of base money, the reserve rate and the state of the economic cycle.
TheOldGreyWhistle wrote:DJP I don’t think over production should be likened to a car accident.You’re misunderstanding me. I wasn’t saying that crises are like car crashes but using it as an illustration of what a tautology is.
robbo203 wrote:I don’t think “anarchy of production” per se is the ultimate cause of crises. After all, unless you are an advocate of society-wide central planning in which the totality of inputs and outputs are consciously coordinated in an apriori sense within a single vast plan – an absurd idea – then socialism too will be based too an an extent on an “anarchic”, self regulating or spontaneously ordered system of production involving the mutual adjustment of a multitude of plans to each other. Actually , there is no other way in which a large scale complex system of production can be run..Nice point Robin. I guess you should the proviso ‘profit motive’ should be added to avoid this possible confusion.
