From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Fri Mar 02 2007 - 13:11:41 EST
> >Allin: > >Then why not say prices are _the_ necessary mode of expression of >value? The 'a' seems to imply that values need to be expressed >somehow, and prices are one way of doing so, depending on the >social context. Which is what I believe. > >There are various levels here: > >1. The labour times required to produce things >2. "Value" (or "labour value") >3. Exchange value >4. Price > >Paul and I tend to favour a terminology in which 1 and 2 are just >equivalent: "value" means the labour time required. To be sure, in any mode of production social labor time will have to be allocated, but there is more to value. In this mode of production things have value in that controls often fail to manipulate prices over or above value, the value of things appearing as a real property like magnetic attraction. Things in the saddle/And ride mankind. To the extent that this fetishism would be overcome, value too would be overcome, no? In other words, by value Marx means more than labor time required; he refers to an emergent objective illusion when social relations are mediated by commodities, those commodities apparently acquiring the pseudo-property of value and ruling over their producers. Perhaps this somewhat vague understanding of value is tied to a humanist/alienation problematic from which Marx did not break, but as even Lucio Colletti long ago argued, Marx's theory of value is inseparable from his theory of fetishism. In Anti Duhring Engels refers to the possibility of organizing production without value. Rakesh
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Mar 31 2007 - 01:00:12 EDT