From: Michael Williams (michael.williams.j@GOOGLEMAIL.COM)
Date: Thu Aug 09 2007 - 10:48:00 EDT
nothing much wrong with this signed : a value-form theorist. see me & reuten 19891 On 09/08/07, Alejandro Agafonow <alejandro_agafonow@yahoo.es> wrote: > Dear Friends: > > I would like your advice concerning a startling –for a non-Marxist socialist > like me– quotation from Frederick Engels, The Poverty of Philosophy, Preface > to the First German Edition. > [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/pre-1885.htm] > > He seems to reject what has come to be the standard account of Marxism, > including Engels himself. > > Alejandro Agafonow > > > «[…] continual deviations of the prices of commodities from their values are > the necessary condition in and through which the value of the commodities as > such can come into existence. Only through the fluctuations of competition, > and consequently of commodity prices, does the law of value of commodity > production assert itself and the determination of the value of the commodity > by the socially necessary labour time become a reality. […] To desire, in a > society of producers who exchange their commodities, to establish the > determination of value by labour time, by forbidding competition to > establish this determination of value through pressure on prices in the only > way it can be established, is therefore merely to prove that, at least in > this sphere, one has adopted the usual utopian disdain of economic laws. […] > competition, by bringing into operation the law of value of commodity > production in a society of producers who exchange their commodities, > precisely thereby brings about the only organisation and arrangement of > social production which is possible in the circumstances. Only through the > undervaluation or overvaluation of products is it forcibly brought home to > the individual commodity producers what society requires or does not require > and in what amounts. But it is precisely this sole regulator that the utopia > advocated by Rodbertus among others wishes to abolish. And if we then ask > what guarantee we have that necessary quantity and not more of each product > will be produced, that we shall not go hungry in regard to corn and meat > while we are choked in beet sugar and drowned in potato spirit, that we > shall not lack trousers to cover our nakedness while trouser buttons flood > us by the million —Rodbertus triumphantly shows us his splendid calculation, > according to which the correct certificate has been handed out for every > superfluous pound of sugar, for every unsold barrel of spirit, for > every unusable trouser button, a calculation which "works out" exactly, and > according to which "all claims will be satisfied and the liquidation > correctly brought about".» > > «If he had investigated by what means and how labour creates value and > therefore also determines and measures it, he would have arrived at socially > necessary labour, necessary for the individual product, both in relation to > other products of the same kind and also in relation to society's total > demand. He would thereby have been confronted with the question as to how > the adjustment of the production of separate commodity producers to the > total social demand takes place, and his whole utopia would thereby have > been made impossible. This time he preferred in fact to "make an > abstraction", namely of precisely that which mattered.» > > > > ____________________________________________________________________________________ > Sé un Mejor Amante del Cine > ¿Quieres saber cómo? ¡Deja que otras personas te ayuden! > http://advision.webevents.yahoo.com/reto/entretenimiento.html -- michael _________________________________________ Dr Michael Williams, PhD, MSc, BA Economics &Strategy Harrow Business School University of Westminster Watford Road Harrow Middlesex HA1 3TP tel : +20 7911 5000 ext 4563 fax: +20 7911 5931
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