Re: [OPE] value-form theory redux

P. Cockshott: **If Marx actually believed what you said 'Money, as a measure of value, is the necessary form of appearance of the immanent measure of value, namely, labour time.' Then Marx's well known political support for communism would be incomprehensible.**     Referring to the same aspect in the model of Heinz Dieterich, the Diego Guerrero compares the Marxian theory with this proposal of labor time accountability as follows:   *For Marx the value of a commodity in a developed capitalist society must be necessarily manifested in money. For that reason he affirms that price is not but ‘another name for the value’. More specifically, he affirms that the value (its substance) is manifested in an ‘exchange value’, whose most developed form is the monetary one, i.e. the price. In contrast, the Bremenian theory sets against each other value and price, as if they were the two polar terms of an antagonistic relation, and this is not only in capitalism but the same idea appears when capitalism and socialism are compared.* (In: Valores, precios y mercado en el postcapitalismo. Una interpretación de la concepción económica del comunismo en Marx. Paper presented at the VII Coloquio Latinoamericano de Economistas Políticos, Caracas, Venezuela, 2007)     Regards,A. Agafonow ________________________________ De: Philip Dunn <hyl0morph@yahoo.co.uk> Para: Outline on Political Economy mailing list <ope@lists.csuchico.edu> Enviado: miércoles, 18 de marzo, 2009 21:58:48 Asunto: RE: [OPE] value-form theory redux On Tue, 2009-03-17 at 22:38 +0000, Paul Cockshott wrote: > What I am meaning is that Mises argued that without money there can be no comparison of > economic alternatives, no rational economic calculation. Mises argued that against the > possibility of socialist economy saying that a non monetary economy would descend into > economic chaos because it would be unable to do economic calculation. > > If Marx actually believed what you said 'Money, as a measure of > value, is the necessary form of appearance of the immanent measure of > value, namely,labour time.' Then Marx's well known political support for communism would > be incomprehensible. If he thought that value could only be measured in terms of money, > why did he advocate a programme for communism in which money would be abolished and > replaced by labour accounts? > The gulf here seems completely unbridgeable. When I quoted that sentence from Marx, I automatically assumed it was intended to apply only to capitalism and foolishly imagined that no-one would think otherwise. Let me be a little autobiographical. I started working on value theory in 1984. 16 years later I had hit the wall. I asked myself who I was doing this for when, in fact, I had stopped doing anything. As it happened I then came into contact with work others were doing. I was initially quite resistant to it, but I tried to understand it rather than dismissing it. Dogmatism is unavoidable when pursuing a research project - the cost is high so one must be convinced one is right. However, there can come a time when the difficult task of opening one's mind to the thought of others is a "growth experience".   _______________________________________________ ope mailing list ope@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/ope

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Received on Thu Mar 19 02:41:41 2009