Re: [OPE] Market socialism [the false assumption of the law of value]

alejandro_agafonow@yahoo.es

ZACHARIAH: «If you have a planned economy with some sort of prices there is no market mechanism by which they can gravitate around labour values. This says nothing about whether the labour theory of value holds as a scientific theory about market exchange.»

The false assumption here is that market mechanism cause the gravitation of prices around labour values. For making a reply you have to face the fact that market economies are never able to reach “natural prices”.

Marxists confuse the normative theory of equilibrium that since A. Smith advocates a social order fulfilling “commutative justice” and the functioning of real markets.

To face my contention exposed in: LA IMPOSIBILIDAD DELCÁLCULO ECONÓMICO «REVISADA» EN EL SOCIALISMO MARXISTA, you have to avoid the pernicious normative interpretation of market economies and build a reply upon the fact that markets operate with “false prices”.

These false prices are the real channels through labour values are conducted by planners or entrepreneurs consciously making decisions.

Who confuse 1) the labour theory of value, as a theory of how economies governed by market exchange operates and 2) the possible use of labour values in a planned economy, are Cottrell and Cockshott (and Zachariah and Wright, etc.) making the former false assumptions.

When I made this contention some time ago you only ask about the mixture of the “transformation problem” and the “accountability issue”. Cockshott made a cryptic mathematical reply that avoids the crucial question: Why his planner consciously reallocates labour time following supply and demand signals?

ZACHARIAH: «For a given commodity-type during a period of time its labour value (singular) is fixed or slowly varying but there is a multitude of market prices that vary over time and space.»

It seems to me that you are confusing labour as a substance forming part of a single product and prices as an accounting phenomenon, being able to get imputed to single products.

Kind regards,
A. Agafonow

----- Mensaje original ----
De: Dave Zachariah <davez@kth.se>
Para: Outline on Political Economy mailing list <ope@lists.csuchico.edu>
Enviado: jueves, 3 de julio, 2008 9:42:19
Asunto: Re: [OPE] Market socialism [the false assumption of the law of value]

Alejandro Agafonow wrote:
>
>  
>
> This is not good. Not even as a hypothesis. If this would be true, why 
> C&C devised a planner that consciously reallocates labour time 
> following supply and demand signals?
>

Alejandro, it seems to me that you have mixed up the issues at stake here.

  1. The labour theory of value, as a theory of how economies governed
      by market exchange operates.
  2. The possible use of labour values in a planned economy.

If you have a planned economy with some sort of prices there is no 
market mechanism by which they can gravitate around labour values. This 
says nothing about whether the labour theory of value holds as a 
scientific theory about market exchange.

>  
>
> Because labour rotates around prices, as I agued here some time ago. 
> The reallocation of labour time doesn’t happen spontaneously. You need 
> planners or entrepreneurs consciously reallocating labour.
>
>  
>

You claimed that 'labour values spins around prices' some time ago, and 
I claimed it was nonsensical but you never replied to this argument: For 
a given commodity-type during a period of time its labour value 
(singular) is fixed or slowly varying but there is a multitude of market 
prices that vary over time and space.

Therefore it would be conceptually wrong to say that 'price is the 
center of gravity for labour value'.

//Dave Z
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