From: Fred Moseley (fmoseley@MTHOLYOKE.EDU)
Date: Sat Jun 19 2004 - 23:28:44 EDT
On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Allin Cottrell wrote: > On Thu, 17 Jun 2004, Ian Wright wrote: > > > > Could anyone explain this idea (I don't think it's specific to Phil)? > > > I confess it makes no sense to me. How does money "measure" anything? > > > > I think the "money as measure" phrase is meant to indicate the > > relation between prices and labour times, although I agree it is a > > loose formulation. Please see my previous post for a more precise formulation. Yes, Ian is right that "money as measure" indicates a relation between prices and labor-times. That relation is that invisible quantities of labor-time are indirectly measured in observable quantities of money (i.e. prices). I don't think this is a loose formulation at all. I think this is a very tight, rigorous formulation, derived at great length by Marx in Section 3 of Chapter 1, and then developed further in Section 1 of Chapter 3. > > > Is this an ellipsis for "[short-run equilibrium] price measures > > > labour-time", in the sense that the quantity of money people are > > > willing to pay for a commodity retrospectively determines the degree > > > to which the labour that went into its production is/was socially > > > necessary? (That I can understand, though I disagree with it.) > > > > Assuming overall that supply meets demand then if I'm very lazy and > > take a long time to make commodity A compared to my competitor, but A > > sells for one price, then some of my labour-time is not rewarded, and > > was therefore socially unnecessary. No? > > To be sure, but in this case money plays no essential role in the > argument: you've taken more than the socially necessary length of time > to produce the commodity, and your specific labour-time, therefore, > does not count at par. > > I was thinking of a different case: I produce some commodity, using > best-practice technology and minimum labour-time, but consumer taste > tuns against it, and it can be sold only at a heavily discounted > price. Does the low price mean that my labour-time is retrospectively > counted as less than socially necessary (i.e. that the _value_ of the > commodity I have produced is depressed by the downturn in demand)? I > think not: rather, price has been depressed below value -- and > presumably the consequence is that the quantity produced will be > curtailed, to the point where price roughly corresponds to value. > > Allin. Allin, I think you are right about this. If supply is less than demand for a particular commodity, then its price will fall below their values (i.e. its long-run average price); excess supply does not cause the value of the commodity to fall. Ian has already answered this question correctly. Comradely, Fred
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