[p2p-research] p2presearch Digest, Vol 19, Issue 150

[Ryan Lanham]

Franz:

Another countryman of yours, Ludwig Wittgenstein, said that knowledge is
ultimately predicated on (reasonable) agreement.  To say that LTV is a "law
of nature" is a sort of nihilism that leaves no possible rebuttal.  You
cannot have proof of this because there is mountains of evidence against
it.  If it was meant as science (and it was) it is simply an error--a bad
theory.  If it is normative--that is, a statement of how things ought to be
rather than how they are (scientific), it is a normative theory that
civilizations the world over have repeatedly rejected.

I've had similar discussions with many other forms of nihilistic
fundamentalism.  You are not seeing the world through different eyes, you
are simply avoiding actual discussion and open inquiry.  As I have said
before, if one cannot begin with some basis of discussion (other than
canonical acceptance of some text--be it Marx or the Gospel of St. Luke),
there is really nothing to be said.

Your canon (Marx) blinds you from actual study.  Therefore to criticize
others for not seeing the world through your text is irreducibly absurd.

Ryan Lanham



On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 2:43 AM, Franz Nahrada <f.nahrada at reflex.at> wrote:

> sorry for just looking occasionally into this list, I feel that the shere
> amount of postings makes it undreadable and proves there is no real focus.
>
> I was just provoqued by Ryans posting to do a short comment on the Labor
> Theory of Value
>
>
> Ryan Langham  writes:
>
> >It is typically taken by economists to be a pre-modern concept that is no
> >longer very useful or insightful because simple observation in any number
> >of
> >types of economies proved it to be inaccurate.   People don't set values
> >on
> >the basis of contributed labor.
>
> The Labour Theory of Value is not about value people *set*. Its rather a
> property of the system and a natural law which is inflicted upon people,
> like the law of gravity, and as the airplane is no proof against the law
> of gravity the seeming "violations" of LTV can be explained and have been
> explained best by nobody else but Marx himself. The popular image of Marx
> is a curse, it seems many people talk about him but have not really read
> him.
> >
> >
> >Carl Menger, who was an Austrian forerunner of Friedrich Hayak, and I
> >believe his teacher, is famous for critiquing the LTV--really taking it
> >out
> >of modern discussion.  That occurred in the late 1800s.
>
> Here is a message from Austria, saying that there is more than one modern
> discussion.
> >
> >Most who deal with these things would argue that prices are not determined
> >by labor but by demand and supply.
>
> Marx had a very classic argument this: what determines the quantity of
> value if demand and supply of a good are equal?
>
> The indifference curves and exchange relations of microeconomics are based
> on given value, not expaining it.
>
>
> > If prices were determined by labor,
> >there would be little incentive to be efficient--a major problem with all
> >authoritarian socialist economies which tend to produce things people
> >don't
> >want.  North Korea, Soviet Union, etc.  They didn't put things on store
> >shelves that people wanted but that they could produce.  That's not very
> >desirable to most people.
>
> Thats an enormous blunder. Because prices are determined by the average
> social labour, there is both:
>
> * a penalty for those who work below average productivity  - the penalty
> felt by authoritarian socialist economics who wantet to mingle with world
> markets
>
> * an incentive for those who produce above productivity to collect extra
> surplus value. The reason why producivity is constantly boosted in
> capitalistic economies without systemic considerations.
>
> Far away from not being able to explain productivity, the LTV is the only
> theory that really can explain it. And more than that: only the LTV
> explains why capital even cares to become producing capital.
>
> just my 2 cents.
>
> Franz
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> p2presearch mailing list
> p2presearch at listcultures.org
> http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20090519/6371f06a/attachment.html>