From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sat Apr 21 2007 - 06:35:08 EDT
Paul wrote: "I think that the Austrian predilection for the individual entrepreneur reflects a fixation with an early stage of capitalism." However, I think the argument does not really change whether or not we see the entrepreneur as an early-capitalist investor, or as a modern corporate investor. It is the same as when Marx talks about the "generic capitalist". It's just that you have this entrepreneurial function, and whether that function happens to be embodied by capitalists, managers, workers etc. is a side-issue. Somebody has to be creative and knowledgeable, sure, but "the function gives you the organ". I'm very interested in the Austrian- and Langean-economic concepts of prices. The reference to prices as objective data or information is in a way a red herring though. What you learn in information science is that an organisation has information needs to reduce uncertainty. In other words, an organisation requires information to orient behaviour, to make good choices and decisions. However, there exist billions of prices and they cannot all orient behaviour, in fact they could confuse behaviour. To orient behaviour, you need price-valuation knowledge of a certain relevant kind, and that is not the same as information as such. This knowledge is lodged in human subjects who select out some data and infer relationships among them. So it is impossible here to discuss prices without reference to the economic actors who are the knowers and evaluators of prices. This remains true whether it's Austrian or Marxian economics. If it exists at all, the law of value is not a law which can assert itself independently of human consciousness - it is precisely mediated through human consciousness. This whole topic is very important - Marxists typically want to defend a theory of value, but the best defence of a theory of value is by getting very clear about the nature of prices. Jurriaan
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