From: OPE-L Administrator (ope-admin@ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu)
Date: Wed May 14 2003 - 03:58:14 EDT
Ian: you will be able to send posts directly to the list from now on./ In solidarity, Jerry ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ian Wright" <ian_paul_wright@hotmail.com> > Hello Jerry, > > I'd be grateful if you could forward this reponse to a posting of > Rakesh. > > Thank you. > > -Ian. > > > > > Re: value and labour > > Rakesh wrote: > > ><snip> > >So if value is a subjective estimate of the consumer and an unknown > and unobservable entity to the seller, then how does it or how can it > possibly come to regulate exchange and production in bourgeois > society? That's my first question. > > And Andrew wrote in reply: > > >Prices are, in general, objective. They are regulated by values, > quite apart from the subjective estimates, or observations of > >anyone. This occurs as an unintended consequence of individual > >actions. It is a mistake to consider that the fundamantal social > causes are always known to social individuals. Social outcomes > >can be unintended consequences of individual actions. > > I'd like to add the following: > > Although the formation of a particular price at a particular time can > be causally influenced by the subjective evaluations of economic > actors, these evaluations are at least constrained by the amount of > money that the actor holds. That amount of money is an objective, > material constraint on those evaluations. Actors do decide to spend > more or less of what money they have, but they do not think money into > existence. That money is a local representation of a global resource > constraint -- the amount of available social labour-time. For example, > in > my experiments with a simple commodity economy, I allowed individual actors > to subjectively evaluate the price of commodities *randomly*. Even in > this case, > average prices are regulated by labour values. The law of value > emerges as an unintended consequence of the ensemble activity of many > private economic actors. Rubin understood this, I think. > > -Ian.
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