Re: (OPE-L) Re: Roberto Veneziani article on TSS

From: Phil Dunn (pscumnud@DIRCON.CO.UK)
Date: Sat Feb 07 2004 - 17:05:48 EST 

Hi Jerry

>http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/links/doi/10.1111/j.0026-1386.2004.00184.x/
>abs/
>
>  Hi Phil.
>
>  > From the abstract:
>>  "Marx's propositions on value and exploitation are tautologically obtained
>>  (i) by constructing a money costs theory of value, where by assumption
>values
>>  are  equal to market prices ..."
>>  I cannot see that as a defect.
>
>It's not a defect to _assume_ that (in the aggregate) commodity values
>equal market prices _if_ that can later be shown to be a  (legitimate)
>_result_  (logical unfolding) of the analysis rather than merely a
>presumption.
>(the previous sentence is in response to your comment, not the article by
>Veneziani or any TSS authors.)

I don't think it is about the aggregate.  TSS takes the value of
constant capital at the disaggregated level as equal to its nominal
cost divided by the MELT.  TSS does not assume that the value of
commodity capital is equal to the nominal price it sells for divided
by the appropriate MELT.  It accepts that there is a price-value
deviation here.  I do not, of course.

>
>This is a methodological imperative.  In the assumption of value = price
>there is  unity (simple unity).  Yet,  there is a systematic divergence of
>individual values from market prices (diversity) that, in Marx's theory,
>leads to the concept of prices of production (unity-in-diversity).   Of
>course, whether this is satisfactorily achieved in Marx's theory is a
>subject that has been debated  _ad nauseum_,  but the point that I'm
>making here (having to do with  assumptions and 'givens')  is a
>methodological one related to the unfolding and ordering of the
>analysis in  a systematic dialectical presentation of the bourgeois mode
>of production. (Jeez ... I'm beginning to sound like an amalgam of
>Mike W and Tony S.).

Value = price is not an assumption.  It is a necessity.  No unfolding
can undo it.  Universal equivalent.

>
>  Are you going to the EEA conference in D.C. this year?

Yes, provided the crazies don't cancel the flight.  Alan Freeman is
responding to Veneziani and Mohun on the MELT and the FMT.

>Phil

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