Re: [OPE] peanut butter value-form theory

Zachariah   My point is that the empirical research on the issue is mistaken Zachariah, because it is built upon a ‘ceteris paribus clause’ which has led you to think in the allegedly gravitational force of labor. You try to devise a causal reasoning from the allegedly evidence that this research offers, but this evidence is not legtimely because it has been reached out of an untenable assumption, i.e. technological change has stopped on time X  to let you catch up with the gap between market prices and labor costs.   This gap is filled in a dynamic theory, which doesn’t require such a ceteris paribus clause, with the initiative of entrepreneurs who trying to foresee changes on consumers’ preferences, disrupting the cost structure of the economy with their marketable-driven inventions. This includes inventions originally conceived with other purposes, the potential contribution to well-being of which has been discovered by entrepreneurs (e.g. Internet).   Worth doesn’t mean, Zachariah,that resources are commensurable by means of a metric. This is just part of a theory of exchange or economic measure. There is a more fundamental question: Does labor concede ‘value as worth’ to the goods produces out of it?   It seems to me that in your attempt to build a tenable response to Bohm-Bawerk, labor theorists of value have missed this original proposition, i.e. labor as conceding value as worth. That’s why your attempts to build a socialist economy have systematically failed providing well-being to real people.   Regards,A. Agafonow ________________________________ De: Dave Zachariah <davez@kth.se> Para: Outline on Political Economy mailing list <ope@lists.csuchico.edu> Enviado: martes, 7 de abril, 2009 11:21:58 Asunto: Re: [OPE] peanut butter value-form theory 2009/4/7 Alejandro Agafonow <alejandro_agafonow@yahoo.es>   The link that you provided doesn’t say anything about the ‘worth’ of resources. Alejandro, what does the "worth of resources" mean to an agent, whether human or not? It means precisely that the resources are commensurable by means of a metric: 'economic value'.   I’m not suggesting that each production process in a capitalist economy is directed by an entrepreneur, That, however, is the implication of your constant reference to the mythical entrepreneur who is responsible for the dynamism of a capitalist economy in your theory.   these entrepreneurs have not confirmed the predictions of the labour theory of value. Then you have not kept up with the empirical research on the issue since 1984: Prices are highly correlated with labour values. Moreover, sectors with higher capital intensity earn lower rates of profit. This is what the stochastic labour theory of value predicts. //Dave Z

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Received on Tue Apr 7 07:30:23 2009