On Sat, 1 Jun 1996, D Hugh-Jones wrote:
> Hold on, do you actually consider the labour theory of value to be
> correct? That products' exchange value (i.e. price) is determined by
> labour-time? I find this very dubious and so do most economists and I
> think most serious Marxists. But if you can give me a good reason, I'd
> be interested.
> Dave Hugh-Jones
> A Rush and a Push and the Land is ours
> dash2@xxxxxxxxx
>
Now I'm not an economist, and its been awhile since I battered around the
idea of the ltv, but on the face of things your formulation seems
incorrect. Its not that a commodities exchange value is determined by
labor time, rather its use value is determined by quantity of labor
required to produce it. When the dominant value of a commodity becomes
exchange value the commodity becomes fetishized, i.e. the commodity
becomes alienated form its use value, that is, labor time has no
connection with market price. This situation is not one which will
either confirm or deny the ltv, rather the ltv is a mechanism for
examining this situation.
But like I say, I'm no economist. And the reason I'm not an economist is
because I take Althusser a bit to seriously. "The lonely hour of the
final instance will never arrive." If such a determinant teleology will
not occure then why, I might ask, are we talking about economics here?
If you're really interested in the ltv then why not take a look at the
marxism archive, where there was a ritch discussion of just this topic
some time back.
Flannon