From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Wed Mar 23 2005 - 00:26:02 EST
Paul, In bourgeois society producers have no guarantee that their products will be exchanged against others. What they must amass then is objectified social power, that is the power to command objectified labor and labor power itself. They are not simply interested in exchange ratios; before that they must have gained the power to exchange. Money is not simply a numeraire but the exclusive representation of abstract labor itself (and money can be such without itself being a commodity if I follow Michael Williams). Otherwise the fetishistic powers that it has would simply be inexplicable. Money is not a veil or mere exchange device but a form of value. In the first part of Capital, Marx's labor theory of value is not primarily a quantitative theory of exchange ratios but a qualitative theory, an explanation of what it is that money exclusively represents (this is what Marx is getting at in the three peculiarities of the equivalent form, which Ajit continues to ignore). At any rate, one cannot make headway here without reference to value, the substance of which is abstract labor. Perhaps one can solve for exchange ratios without reference to value but one cannot understand the fetishistic power of money as other than a representation of abstract labor. Ajit and Hodgson think that there is nothing to Marx's theory of money in the first part of Capital, but if money is what Sraffa reduces it to, then phenomena of capitalist society would simply be inexplicable. I think this is the reason why Paul Davidson ignores neo Ricardian economics. I continue to baffled why you and other obviously very intelligent people proclaim the importance of this formalism. It seems powerless in the face of the profound contradictions which wrack capitalist society. Rakesh
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