[OPE-L:3957] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: m in Marxs theory

From: Duncan K. Foley (foleyd@cepa.newschool.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 04 2000 - 22:04:56 EDT


Gil writes:


>
>My point is just that you don't need
>a labor theory of value, understood as a notion that commodity prices are
>somehow "regulated" by underlying labor values, in order to advance Marx's
>critique, and in some cases reliance on labor value theory is
>counterproductive.  Gil


Doesn't this kind of miss the forest for the trees? I think Marx's 
point was that capitalist societies operate on the basis of money 
value calculations, particularly profitability calculations, and that 
the basic macroeconomic determinants of profitability are the ratio 
of the value of output to the value of capital (what Tom Michl and I 
call the "productivity" of capital) and the ratio of profit to total 
value added (which is a transformation of the rate of exploitation). 
I take the essence of Marx's theory of value to be the observation 
that you can't change the rate of profit in the macroeconomy without 
changing one or the other or both of these variables.

I don't see why Ajit has such trouble with the idea that money 
represents labor time. It seems sort of intuitive to me.

Duncan


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Duncan K. Foley
Leo Model Professor
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