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Paul,
But I am defending Rakesh against Ajit's, and your own point.
Ajit asks, why no theory of demand if demand is an aspect of
value?
my answer: because there is nothing to say about demand at the
abstract level at which marx is working other than banalities.
I referred to microeconomics, but you mention, also, effective
demand (ie the macroeconomic concept).
Here, I would suggest that marx does provide the tools necessary
to consider agg demand. This is not only because the neoclassical
distinction between micro and macro is problematic. More
importantly, one simply cannot comprehend agg effective demand
fully outside of a comprehension of value, surplus value etc.: in
building up these concepts marx is building up an adequate
conception of usually confused concepts such as agg effective
demand. Therefore, while it may not look like it to begin with, Marx
is
not *ignoring* demand in his analysis, and Ajit's point does not hit
home
against Rakesh (that's my argument here anyway).
On the main issue at hand: well part of my ongoing discussion with
Rakesh implicitly covers the relation of aggregate demand to
value...but the discsussion is difficult enough for me without
explicitly having to consider the place of agg demand!
In other words I am yet to formulate my own views on exactly how
the notion of demand relates to Marx's notion of value. But this
discussion is helpful!
Andy
On 12 Jun 2000, at 12:12, Paul Cockshott wrote:
> At 11:17 12/06/00 +0100, Andrew Brown wrote:
> >Regarding the theory of demand:
> >
> >is there really much more to say, at the *abstract* level (ie
> >generalising over all markets in the manner of microeconomics),
> >than banalaties:
>
>
> I agree, but that statement is from the standpoint of a classical
> marxian view of the theory of value - that it is determined in
> production not by market conditions.
>
> I was just supporting Ajits point that if you think marx was saying
> demand was important to the determination of value, why did he
not
> analyse it.
>
> My take on it is that demand is not important to the determination
> of value except in the case of marginal land, and that this was
> also the position of Marx. Rakesh has been arguing that
commodities only
> have value once there is sufficient effective demand for them to
sell.
> If that is the case, then one needs a theory of effective demand
to get
> a coherent system.
>
> By the way part of this may be terminological, Rakesh sees
commodities
> prior to sale as having potential value. I would say they have value
> which has a big influence on their likely exchange value, so that
if
> we systematically relabel all uses of the unqualified noun value in
what
> I write with the phrase 'potential value', what I am saying will be
> translateable without loss of meaning into a format acceptable to
> Rakesh.
>
>
>
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