the LTV is correct

[trivas7]

Comrade Cooney, speaking re Capital Vol. 1, has this to say re how social relations are mediated by commodities under capitalism:

If the world were all one big factory the productive relations between people would be direct productive relations. The division of labor, the apportioning of varying amounts of labor to different tasks, and the organization of production would be direct and transparent. This would be true regardless of whether the factory was run hierarchically or democratically. As Marx points out later in Volume 1, the internal workings of the capitalist firm are exactly this type of direct social relation (as are most historical forms of productive activity where people created their own means of subsistence rather than purchasing it in the market). But market relations between producers (whether these producers be capitalist firms or individual producers) are not organized in this direct, transparent way. When the market is used to coordinate the allocation of labor a very unique world of appearance emerges. The allocation of labor takes place through the exchange of objects rather than through direct social relations. Allocation of labor takes place not through a conscious plan but is coordinated through the indirect pressure of market forces. When individuals meet in the market they are not making decisions about the allocation of labor. They are merely exchanging commodities, seeking to fulfill their own needs and desires. While bourgeois economics sees this subjective, utility maximizing behavior as the starting and ending point of economic analysis Marx sees that behind these transitory, fleeting acts of exchange lies a network of social relations, social relations that result in the allocation of labor time in order to meet society’s needs. It is the process of exchanging these things, these commodities, that creates and coordinates these social relations. Yet at the same time these social relations appear not to be social at all. They appear to be relations between individuals and commodities. Commodities seem to have a value all of their own (or as marginal utility theory holds, a value solely the result of the relation of individual desire and an object’s utility.) But Marx says this exchange value only exists because of the role exchange plays in the allocation of social labor. This need to apportion labor time is the ultimate regulating factor in determining the value of things. But this process goes on behind our backs making objects themselves seem to be bearers of social power. The social relations between people become relations between things.

It is common for people, on a quick read through the fetishism section in the first chapter of Volume 1, to think that commodity fetishism – this notion that commodities themselves have social power, detached from their social relations- is all about a world of illusion that obscures the underlying nature of capitalist social relations. Sometimes people think that commodity fetishism is some sort of ideological phenomenon that needs to be torn down to reveal the underlying reality . But Marx is saying something deeper. This world of illusion is a necessary part of the basic form of exchange. Social relations between producers in a market society can ONLY be expressed through the exchange of commodities. It’s not that commodities just appear to take on social power. Commodities really do have social power. The really do have values that act upon people as a social force. Market social relations are “thing-i-fied” and physical objects are “person-i-fied”. When social relations take the form of things Marx calls this reification. So when the process of allocation takes the form of value and when value is expressed in money, money becomes reified. It takes on a social power that is real. It doesn’t matter if one is conscious of the social relation implied in money or not. The illusion is permanent, even if you know it is an illusion.

[mikelepore]

I don't feel like finding the going rates of horse and buggies at a steady dollar value, but I will say that it is pretty intuitive.

Not intuitive at all. If the buggy company makes a million buggies a year, they may enjoy an economy of scale that they can't have by making a thousand buggies a year. Therefore, is cars replace buggies, you can have FEWER people want buggies, and the value of a buggy is GREATER.

I apologize for not distinguishing from price (exchange value) and value (use value), but obviously the more important value is the use value as without it nothing would have exchange value.

Again, if you are unconvinced by my arguments, just be aware of the differences in terminology. In Marxian terminology, your phrase "price (exchange value) and value (use value)" is all messed up.

Exchange value = the word value when there is no adjective in front of it = the central level about which the price fluctuates.

In Marx's model, "value" is more similar to the thing that a modern capitalist who trades commodity futures by using technical analysis (the support and resistance concepts) would call a moving average with a long term. Perhaps the thirty-year moving average. The current price oscillates above and below it.

And to your final paragraph: yes.

[mikelepore]

Quotable:

___________________________


"The value of commodities is determined by the labour required for their production. But now it turns out that in this imperfect world commodities are sold sometimes above, sometimes below their value, and indeed not only as a result of ups and downs in competition. The rate of profit tends just as much to balance out at the same level for all capitalists as the price of commodities does to become reduced to the labour value by agency of supply and demand."

-- Engels, preface to the first edition of Marx, "The Poverty of Philosophy"

_____________________________

"In general, values are relatively constant, but prices fluctuate. If there is a lot of wheat available and not many buyers, its price falls. Sometimes the price of certain commodities falls below their value but, in general, prices fluctuate around their value, sometimes above value and sometimes below. These fluctuations, sometimes above value and sometimes below, cancel each other so that on the average commodities exchange at their value."

John Keracher, "Economics for Beginners"

____________________________

"The value, exchange value, of commodities is determined by the amount of socially necessary labor-power for production crystallized in them. Actual exchange does not always take place by that standard. The perturbations of the market, due mainly to varying supply and demand, one time sends the price up above, other times sends it down below the value. Value is the center towards which current prices gravitate. Hence 'value' and 'price' are different things, though they may, and periodically and in the long run do coincide."

Daniel De Leon, newspaper editorial April 19, 1912

[syndicat]

b) doesn't/can't exist (perfect competition never occurs)

Marx was making the same assumption that all economists make. Neoclassical economics can't prove that markets are efficient without making the same assumption.

[LeftSideDown]

Just be aware that in Marxian terminology use value isn't a quantity at all, it's binary to either have it or not have it. For example, copper has at least one use, say, making brass doorknobs, therefore presence of use value = yes. (Mud pies, presence of use value = no.) If it's yes, there can exist a marketplace. Use value is an enabling variable like a series electrical switch or an opened pneumatic valve. It has to be "yes", otherwise exchange value will be zero. But in itself it's not a number or any kind of magnitude.

No, it still wouldn't have use value just because it makes door knobs. The door knobs have to have value as well and not just that it "can be used" but that it gives utility. By your logic mud could very much have value because it could be used to make mudpies which could be used in a comedy show (like throwing the pie in someones face). Obviously its not just whether or not it can be used but that it has utility.

You're right that its not a number in any kind of magnitude; it has no units of value. If I say I got 10 utils of something and you got 5 you very well could've gotten more pleasure than me, but you simply use a different scale.

[anticap]

If something gives no utility to anyone then it has no exchange value.

Agreed, but I'm not sure why you're telling me this, since it could almost be a quote from Das Kapital.

Ignoring this distinction is a large problem....

Great! I'm glad we agree. Now, will you please make explicit which one you mean from now on?

Oh, and please tell all your friends!

[LeftSideDown]

Agreed, but I'm not sure why you're telling me this, since it could almost be a quote from Das Kapital.

Because I'm asserting its true even if it was not within the confines of Das Kapital

Great! I'm glad we agree. Now, will you please make explicit which one you mean from now on?

Oh, and please tell all your friends!

I will, but its so much easier to use ambiguous terms and then say "aha!" and attack your mistaken interpretations of what I mean by value! (Sarcasm).

[mikelepore]

No, it still wouldn't have use value just because it makes door knobs. The door knobs have to have value as well and not just that it "can be used" but that it gives utility. By your logic mud could very much have value because it could be used to make mudpies which could be used in a comedy show (like throwing the pie in someones face). Obviously its not just whether or not it can be used but that it has utility.

I meant to imply the case in which the article confers utility to someone when I said that if "it has at least one use" then "there can exist a marketplace." The market for the article is the sign that a utility is perceived.

But I said "at least one" because additional uses aren't necessary for the market to exist. As long as some people enjoy brass doorknobs, there will exist a market for copper, without qualifying that to consider its usefulness in wiring and plumbing. Any one utility of sufficient magnitude launches a marketplace.

Except in the case of dictatorial decisions by the capitalist class. For example, people could want electric cars for any number of decades while the makers of gasoline cars continue to refuse to allow them to be made, or the abrupt disappearance of phonograph records from stores, which occurred over just a few days. In these cases, the capitalist is saying to the customers, "To hell with your willingness to buy something. I refuse to sell it to you." So the narcissistic ego of the capitalist, who gets a thrill out of proving that he's the boss, is another factor that determines whether the market shall exist.

[trivas7]

I
Except in the case of dictatorial decisions by the capitalist class. For example, people could want electric cars for any number of decades while the makers of gasoline cars continue to refuse to allow them to be made, or the abrupt disappearance of phonograph records from stores, which occurred over just a few days. In these cases, the capitalist is saying to the customers, "To hell with your willingness to buy something. I refuse to sell it to you." So the narcissistic ego of the capitalist, who gets a thrill out of proving that he's the boss, is another factor that determines whether the market shall exist.

But this fails to take into account that the capitalist is subject to the same market forces as any other economic agent. The capitalist -- except through the intervention of the state -- can only make a profit on goods that consumers are willing to pay for and therefore ignores his customer's wishes to his peril.

Whereas Marx and the classical economists start from the social character of the act of exchange, and regard exchange value as the objective link between owners (producers) of different commodities, the neo-classical economist starts from the individual character of needs, and regards exchange-value as a subjective link between the individual and the commodity.

[Left-Reasoning]

Exchange value = the word value when there is no adjective in front of it = the central level about which the price fluctuates.

False. Value means the subjective consideration of an individual. What you are speaking of is the price of the good in equilibrium.

[anticap]

And here again we see an example of why it is critical that people make explicit just what they mean when they say "value": because different people mean different things by it.

[mikelepore]

False. Value means the subjective consideration of an individual. What you are speaking of is the price of the good in equilibrium.

As I explained, I'm only telling you how this word is used as a technical term in Marx's model. You may not agree with that model, but someone can't even discuss an author, even to criticize that author, without knowing their own glossary.

If we were criticizing Kant we would have to know how he uses the word "category", and if we were criticizing Hegel we have to know how he uses the word "absolute", etc. Before criticizing Marx, we have to know, not how your college textbook uses the word "value", but how Marx used that word.

Marx wasn't using this terminology as of the time of his earler pamphlet _Wage-Labour and Capital_. At that time he was still saying "cost of production" in places where later he would be saying "value." But then, as of the time of his later pamphlet _Value, Price and Profit_, he was using the word "value" for this purpose.

[trivas7]

Marx’s value theory is much more than a theory of price. It is a theory of the way social relations between people take on material forms that then act back upon and shape these social relations.

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