Use-Value, Exchange-Value, and the Demise of Marx's
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Value's Law, Value's Metric
Values Law Values Metric by P Co ckshott A Cottrell Research Rep ort RR Novemb er Values Law Values Metric W Paul Co ckshott and Allin F Cottrell septemb er Abstract It is argued that the metric space of exchanging commo dities is noneuclidean and characteristic of a system governed by a conservation law The p ossible can didates for what is conserved in commo dity exchange are reviewed with reference to inverted inputoutput matrices of the British economy Strong evidence is pre sented that the conserved substance is lab our The arguments of Mirowski and others regarding the appropriateness of such physicalist arguments are discussed What is meant by the law of value The phrase law of value is little used by Marx but p opular among his followers It has no precise denition of the typ e that one would exp ect for a scientic law Laws such as Ho okes law or Boyles law have a concise denition that any chemist or physicist could rep eat but it is doubtful if anywhere in the Marxist literature there exists a comparable denition of the law of value On the basis of what Ricardo and Marx wrote on the theory we would advance the following as a reasonable denition The law of value states that value understood as the labour time social ly necessary to produce a commodity is conserved in the exchange of commodities The advantages of this denition are that it is cast in the normal form of a sci entic law it is empirically testable it has a precise meaning and it emphasizes the fundamental Marxian prop osition that value cannot arise in circulation -
Advertising and the Creation of Exchange Value
University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses Summer November 2014 Advertising and the Creation of Exchange Value Zoe Sherman University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Economic History Commons, Political Economy Commons, and the Public Relations and Advertising Commons Recommended Citation Sherman, Zoe, "Advertising and the Creation of Exchange Value" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 205. https://doi.org/10.7275/5625701.0 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/205 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ADVERTISING AND THE CREATION OF EXCHANGE VALUE A Dissertation Presented by ZOE SHERMAN Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2014 Economics © Copyright by Zoe Sherman 2014 All Rights Reserved ADVERTISING AND THE CREATION OF EXCHANGE VALUE A Dissertation Presented by ZOE SHERMAN Approved as to style and content by: ______________________________________ Gerald Friedman, Chair ______________________________________ Michael Ash, Member ______________________________________ Judith Smith, Member ___________________________________ Michael Ash, Department Chair Economics DEDICATION Dedicated to the memory of Stephen Resnick. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have had many strokes of good fortune in my life, not least the intellectual and emotional support I have enjoyed throughout my graduate studies. Stephen Resnick, Gerald Friedman, Michael Ash, and Judith Smith were the midwives of this work. -
The Emergence of the Law of Value in a Dynamic Simple Commodity Economy
Review of Political Economy, Volume 20, Number 3, 367–391, July 2008 The Emergence of the Law of Value in a Dynamic Simple Commodity Economy IAN WRIGHT Faculty of Social Sciences, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK ABSTRACT A dynamic computational model of a simple commodity economy is examined and a theory of the relationship between commodity values, market prices and the efficient division of social labour is developed. The main conclusions are: (i) the labour value of a commodity is an attractor for its market price; (ii) market prices are error signals that function to allocate the available social labour between sectors of production; and (iii) the tendency of prices to approach labour values is the monetary expression of the tendency of a simple commodity economy to allocate social labour efficiently. The model demonstrates that, in the special case of simple commodity production, Marx’s law of value can naturally emerge from multiple local exchanges and operate ‘behind the backs’ of actors solely via money flows that place budget constraints on their local evaluations of commodity prices, which are otherwise subjective and unconstrained. 1. Introduction Marx, following Ricardo, held a labour theory of the economic value of reprodu- cible commodities. The value of a commodity is determined by the prevailing technical conditions of production and measured by the socially necessary labour-time required to produce it (Marx, 1867). The value of a commodity is to be distinguished from its price, which is the amount of money it fetches in the market. According to Marx, although individual economic actors may differ in their subjective evaluations of the worth or ‘value’ of commodities, market prices are nevertheless determined by labour values due to the operation of the ‘law of value’, an objective economic law that emerges as an unintended consequence of local and distributed market exchanges. -
POLITICAL ECONOMY in GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY John Lodewijks
POLITICAL ECONOMY IN GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY John Lodewijks A 2012 national survey of the economics curriculum in Australia noted that there were two centres of economics teaching that are explicitly and significantly pluralist. The first is the Political Economy program at the University of Sydney. The second is the Economics and Finance Program at the University of Western Sydney. The case of Sydney University is well documented (Butler, Jones and Stilwell 2009), but the UWS case is not so well known. Yet UWS has its own distinctive story that offers instructive lessons to those interested in a more pluralist economics curriculum. UWS developed a political economy/economics program that was highly rated in both teaching and research outcomes but was suddenly and disappointingly derailed by senior management. This article, written from an insider’s perspective, chronicles this episode and raises broader issues about the future of political economy and economics more generally in the current system of university governance and the current policy environment for tertiary education. UWS The University of Western Sydney began operation only as recently as January 1989 as a federated network university. From the beginning of 2001 the University of Western Sydney operated as a single multi- campus university rather than as a federation. The UWS student profile is distinct. Approximately 75 per cent of domestic students are from Greater Western Sydney, 62 per cent of commencing students are ‘first in family’ to go to university, and 70 per cent of students juggle work and study (working longer hours on average than students nationally). The highest number of low SES students – students from low income and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds – of any Australian university POLITICAL ECONOMY IN GREATER WESTERN SYDNEY 81 (over 8,000, 23.7 percent) attends UWS. -
Makoto Itoh P
On the Value and Exchange-Value of Money Referring to the Definition of Value of Money in the 'New Interpretation' Makoto Itoh Professor, Kokugakuin University, Tokyo 1 1 The Significance of Value of Money in the 'New Interpretation' A 'new interpretation' on the transformation problem concerning Marx's theory of transforming values into prices of production was presented by D.K.Foley(1982, 1986) and G.Duménile(1983) among others and became influential among a certain number of contemporary Marxian political economists. The 'new interpretation' is based on a particular definition of value of money as the monetary expression of labor time. More concretely, the value of money is conceived as 'the ratio of the net domestic product at current prices to the living productive labor expended in an economy over a period of time' (Foley, 2000,p.21), and thus it represents the average amount of expended labor time obtainable by a unit of money, say a dollar. For example, in the USA in the early 1980s, the aggregate national value added was about $3 trillion, while about 100 million of employed workers expended 200,000 million hours (each 2,000 hours) a year. Therefore, 1 hour of labor contributed $15 of value added, and the value of a dollar was 1/15 hour (4 minutes) of social labor (Foley, 1986, p.14-15). This notion of value of money is different from Marx's notion of value of money commodity as embodied labor time in a unit of money commodity. It is, however, conceived as a useful notion in solving the traditional treatment of the transformation problem. -
The Critique of Real Abstraction: from the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again
The Critique of Real Abstraction: from the Critical Theory of Society to the Critique of Political Economy and Back Again Chris O’Kane John Jay, CUNY [email protected] There has been a renewed engagement with the idea of real abstraction in recent years. Scholars associated with the New Reading of Marx, such as Moishe Postone, Chris Arthur, Michael Heinrich, Patrick Murray, Riccardo Bellofiore and others,1 have employed the idea in their important reconstructions of Marx’s critique of political economy. Alberto Toscano, Endnotes, Jason W. Moore and others have utilized and extended these theorizations to concieve of race, gender, and nature as real abstractions. Both the New Reading and these new theories of real abstraction have provided invaluable work; the former in systematizing Marx’s inconsistent and unfinished theory of value as a theory of the abstract social domination of capital accumulation and reproduction; the latter in supplementing such a theory. Yet their exclusive focus on real abstraction in relation to the critique of political economy means that the critical marxian theories of real abstraction -- developed by Alfred Sohn- Rethel, Theodor W. Adorno and Henri Lefebvre -- have been mostly bypassed by the latter and have largely served as the object of trenchant criticism for their insufficient grasp of Marx’s theory of value by the former. Consequently these new readings and new theories of real abstraction elide important aspects of Sohn-Rethel, Adorno and Lefebvre’s critiques of real abstraction; which sought to develop Marx’s critique of political economy into objective-subjective critical theories of the reproduction of capitalist society.2 However, two recent works by 1 Moishe Postone’s interpretation of real abstraction will be discussed below. -
The Debtwatch Manifesto January 1 St 2012
Professor Steve Keen The Debtwatch Manifesto January 1 st 2012 The Debtwatch Manifesto Preamble ................................................................................................................................................. 1 A realistic economics .............................................................................................................................. 5 Critiquing Neoclassical economics ...................................................................................................... 6 Developing an alternative ................................................................................................................... 7 Specific projects .................................................................................................................................. 8 A Modern Jubilee .................................................................................................................................. 15 Taming the Finance Sector ................................................................................................................ 19 Taming the Credit Accelerator .......................................................................................................... 22 Jubilee Shares.................................................................................................................................... 27 “The Pill” .......................................................................................................................................... -
A Critique of Econophysics
Munich Personal RePEc Archive Toolism! A Critique of Econophysics Kakarot-Handtke, Egmont University of Stuttgart, Institute of Economics and Law 30 April 2013 Online at https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/46630/ MPRA Paper No. 46630, posted 30 Apr 2013 13:04 UTC Toolism! A Critique of Econophysics Egmont Kakarot-Handtke* Abstract Economists are fond of the physicists’ powerful tools. As a popular mindset Toolism is as old as economics but the transplants failed to produce the same successes as in their aboriginal environment. Economists therefore looked more and more to the math department for inspiration. Now the tide turns again. The ongoing crisis discredits standard economics and offers the chance for a comeback. Modern econophysics commands the most powerful tools and argues that there are many occasions for their application. The present paper argues that it is not a change of tools that is most urgently needed but a paradigm change. JEL A12, B16, B41 Keywords new framework of concepts; structure-centric; axiom set; paradigm; income; profit; money; invariance principle *Affiliation: University of Stuttgart, Institute of Economics and Law, Keplerstrasse 17, D-70174 Stuttgart. Correspondence address: AXEC, Egmont Kakarot-Handtke, Hohenzollernstraße 11, D- 80801 München, Germany, e-mail: [email protected] 1 1 Powerful tools When Arnold Schwarzenegger, in his most popular roles, has seen and suffered enough evil he makes up his mind and first of all breaks into a gun store. With the eyes of an expert he spots the most suitable devices for the upcoming tasks. When he leaves the store with maximum firepower and determination we can rely upon that in the sequel humankind will be better off. -
Exchange-Value and the Concealment of Theft and Violence
Continental Thought & Theory CT&T A journal of intellectual freedom Volume 1 | Issue 2: Debt and Value 269-291 | ISSN: 2463-333X Exchange-Value and the Concealment of Theft and Violence Jeta Mulaj Abstract: Exploring the phantom-like objectivity of exchange-value, this paper seeks to analyze the ways in which capitalist exchange relations conceal theft, violence, and exploitation. This paper begins with a critical analysis of Marx’s account of the phantom-like objectivity of exchange-value. Then, the paper elucidates the exchange between the worker and capital as an exchange of non-equivalents, while exploring the ways in which exchange-relations and the wage system conceal unpaid labour inside and outside the working day. Finally, drawing on the work of Silvia Federici and Massimo De Angelis, I argue that exchange-value and the wage system conceal violence and exploitation on at least three levels: unpaid surplus-labour, unpaid reproductive labour, and the permanence of primitive accumulation. Keywords: Exchange-value, primitive accumulation, surplus-value, Marx, Silvia Federici http://ctt.canterbury.ac.nz CONTINENTAL THOUGHT & THEORY: A JOURNAL OF INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM Volume 1, Issue 2: Debt and Value Karl Marx’s Capital is filled with ghosts, phantoms, monsters, “peculiar natures,” and hauntings. From the first chapter of Capital Volume I Marx expresses his concern with the peculiarity of the commodity. This peculiarity deepens and becomes more troubling as the relations between use-value and exchange- value, social relations of production, primitive accumulation, and wage-labor are exposed. At the center of all these relations stands exchange-value. Unlike use- value, which includes the sensuous and material characteristics of the object, exchange-value is not a thing that belongs to the object. -
Debunking Macroeconomics
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Research Papers in Economics Economic AnAlysis & Policy, Vol. 41 no. 3, dEcEmbEr 2011 Debunking Macroeconomics Steve Keen School of Economics & Finance, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith 1797, NSW Australia (Email: [email protected]) Abstract: The failure of neoclassical models to warn of the economic crisis has led to some rare soul searching in a discipline not known for such introspection. The dominant reaction within the profession has been to admit the failure, but to argue that there is no need for a drastic revision of economic theory. I reject this comfortable conclusion, and argue instead that this crisis illustrates the point made beforehand by Robert Solow, that models in which macroeconomic pathologies are impossible are not adequate models of capitalism. Hicks’s critique of his own IS-LM model also indicates that, though pathologies can be imposed on an IS-LM model, it is also inappropriate for macroeconomic analysis because of its false imposition of equilibrium conditions derived from Walras’ Law. I then focus upon what I see as the key weakness in the neoclassical approach to macroeconomics which applies to both DSGE and IS-LM models: the false assumption that the money supply is exogenous. After outlining the alternative endogenous money perspective, I show that Walras’ Law must be generalized for a credit economy to what I call the “Walras-Schumpeter-Minsky Law”. The empirical data strongly supports this perspective, emphasizing the need for a “root and branch” reform of macroeconomics. -
Money As 'Universal Equivalent' and Its Origins in Commodity Exchange
MONEY AS ‘UNIVERSAL EQUIVALENT’ AND ITS ORIGIN IN COMMODITY EXCHANGE COSTAS LAPAVITSAS DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES UNIVERSITY OF LONDON [email protected] MAY 2003 1 1.Introduction The debate between Zelizer (2000) and Fine and Lapavitsas (2000) in the pages of Economy and Society refers to the conceptualisation of money. Zelizer rejects the theorising of money by neoclassical economics (and some sociology), and claims that the concept of ‘money in general’ is invalid. Fine and Lapavitsas also criticise the neoclassical treatment of money but argue, from a Marxist perspective, that ‘money in general’ remains essential for social science. Intervening, Ingham (2001) finds both sides confused and in need of ‘untangling’. It is worth stressing that, despite appearing to be equally critical of both sides, Ingham (2001: 305) ‘strongly agrees’ with Fine and Lapavitsas on the main issue in contention, and defends the importance of a theory of ‘money in general’. However, he sharply criticises Fine and Lapavitsas for drawing on Marx’s work, which he considers incapable of supporting a theory of ‘money in general’. Complicating things further, Ingham (2001: 305) also declares himself ‘at odds with Fine and Lapavitsas’s interpretation of Marx’s conception of money’. For Ingham, in short, Fine and Lapavitsas are right to stress the importance of ‘money in general’ but wrong to rely on Marx, whom they misinterpret to boot. Responding to these charges is awkward since, on the one hand, Ingham concurs with the main thrust of Fine and Lapavitsas and, on the other, there is little to be gained from contesting what Marx ‘really said’ on the issue of money. -
The Basic Theory of Capitalism: a Critical Review of Itoh and the Uno School
The Basic Theory of Capitalism: A Critical Review of Itoh and the Uno School Simon Clarke Makoto Itoh: The Basic Theory of Capitalism: The Forms and Substance of the Capitalist Economy, Macmillan, Basingstoke, 1988. 1 The Uno Approach and the Pure Theory of Cap- italism Makoto Itoh's work is well-known to readers of Capital and Class through his long-standing involvement in the CSE. He has now brought together his contributions to the debates on the theory of value and the theory of crisis within a systematic exposition of Marxist theory which brings out clearly the roots of his perspective in the work of Uno. The Uno School is one of the major schools of post-war Japanese Marxism, which came to prominence in the 1960s.1 The Uno approach is marked by a radical neo-Kantian separation of theory from politics, and a fierce opposition to logical-historical interpretations of Capital in favour of a sharp distinction between theoretical and historical analysis. Itoh's book is important in making the Uno approach more accessible to an English speaking readership by relating its perspective directly to the recent English language debates. Although Itoh revises and develops the Uno approach, particularly in his concern to give the theory a greater political and historical relevance, he retains the essential methodological and theoretical foundations of the Uno approach. While Itoh's contribution is of considerable interest in its own right, in this article I intend to focus on these foundations as the basis of a critique of Itoh's book. The methodological foundations of the Uno school lie in the radical sepa- ration of three levels of analysis.