From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sun Dec 11 2005 - 10:16:53 EST
Jerry, You queried me once on the distinction between ideal prices and real prices. I've just written a simple wiki about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_prices_and_ideal_prices My personal opinion, which I have not (yet) defended in an scholarly article however, is that in discussing the forms of value, Marx paid insufficient attention to the "price form". Very radically, he mostly disregards the whole exciting hustle and bustle of buying and selling, and wheeling and dealing in markets, concentrating instead on the global *results* to which the process would tend. But really there is of course much more to price theory, and as I said before, I think that if you inquire further into the epistemology and social ontology of prices, you can find a powerful proof there for the necessity of a theory of economic value... if rational economic actors exercising utility preferences are rational, their valuations are not arbitrary and random but systematic, as well as being objectifed in transactions. Jurriaan
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