This question was originally directed to the project by e. ahmet Tonak, Anwar Shaikh, and Sungur Savran: Empirical Measurement of Labour Theory Of Value Categories. But I think my question has a more general significance and I changed the title of my question. The following question is the original one.
Are you thinking that prices of commodities are proportional to their embodied labor? If not, what are you planning to do?
After the long debate on transformation problem, it seems useless efforts to attempt to prove that labor contents are proportional to prices. Single system interpretation is an abandonment of labor theory of value. You may explain exploitation but it is not already a theory of value. You may dress a table of national accounting on the base of labor hours, but you cannot explain how and why such and such things happened in the real capitalist economy. You may have much more important things to do in understanding capitalism.
If you want to make reconciliation with Marx's thought, the following comment by Lyudmila Vashina on Rubin's book would be suggesting:
- Rubin came to the following conclusion: the main part of Marx's theory of value is not the proof that the value of a commodity depends on the quantity of labor expended in the production of the commodity, but the understanding that production relations of commodity capitalist economy inevitably take the value form and the labour is expressed only in values. It is wrong to think, Rubin insists, that, starting from value phenomena of things, Marx arrived as a result of analysis to the conclusion that the common thing was labor as a result of analysis to the conclusion (This kind of problem setting was seen among precursors of Marx). According to Rubins's interpretation, Marx's process of thinking was essentially the converse. The "private" labor of individual producers can be transformed into social labor only through the value of their labor products. (Excerpt from Lyudmina Vashina's paper Rubin and his manuscript which was attached to Rubins's book Outline of Monetary Theory of Marx (2011) in Russian edited by her; my translation from the Japanese translation by Susumu Takenaga)
@Stavros Mavroudeas
I wonder if the same question is applicable to the research style in which Stavros Mavroudeas is working on.
I have read his paper:
Cartelier's Monetary approach a convincing alternative to the labour theory of value? A comment
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321678654_Is_Cartelier%27s_Monetary_approach_a_convincing_alternative_to_the_labour_theory_of_value_A_comment
Many of his critique are right, but my impression is something like this: Stavros is too busy in defending Marx and is not considering how to develop further Marx's theory. Fundamental Marxists may have a good will but it is quite possible that they are loosing chance to contribute to bring down the neoclassical economics from the throne.
Shiozawa's question is very important for changing ideas on how to surpass the current problems on value theory. I am working on a very specific and methodological approach regarding the critique of redundancy inaugurated by Paul Anthony Samuelson in his paper from 1971. It is correct to empirically prove the validity of the Labor Theory of Value like Shaikh and others do. It is also correct to defend the connection between labor and value/price. However, in my view, it is much more accurate from the standpoint of communism not to stress so much on the theoretical foundations of the labor theory or value, but rather on its practical content. Any value theory can be justified technically to support any political position. So, it is not a matter of proving that value theory "A" or "B" is superior in order to explain the quantity dimension of values/prices. All value theories are valid from the pure technical standpoint.
Marginalists will always find a way to counterattack if we do not adopt a more inteligent and less agressive discourse against neoclassical economics.
Rubin has an extraordinary good way of dealing with the issue, but I still think it is not enough, because he focuses too much on the quality side of value and he is desperate to rebut the subjective perspective which supports the marginalist approach to value theory. He seems to forget that subjective and objective are two contradictory entities in the unity, so it is impossible to solve the value pradigm choosing one of them.
To me, the way out of the infinite transformation problem is to research the transition from market to planning. Neoclassical economics has a huge material regarding this intersection between pure market and pure planning which must be studied by Marxists along the lines pointed by Oskar Lange and others.
While I would not class myself as a fundamentalist Marxist or fundamentalist anything, I do think it is important to have clarity in terms of what we are trying to do in our work. For me, the main point of Marxism is to use the ideas of Marx and contemporary Marxist theory and research to locate weaknesses in the rule of capital. To pinpoint capital's fragilities, contradictions, and crises. All the better to generate a politics which focuses on those weaknesses, fragilities, contradictions and crises.
Dear Mohinder,
Let us admit that "value and capital are ghostly characters." Do you think it is sufficient to emphasize the ghostly characters of value and capital?
In the capitalist economy, people make transactions taking prices as ratios of exchange (by means of money). If Marxian economics is an anatomy of capitalism, you should explain how it works and how it fails. You should also explain how capital is accumulated. Depicting ghostly nature of capital is only a part of the whole structure of the anatomy. Then, it is necessary that you develop a theory of prices by which to analyse economic processes just like Marx did in volume II of his Capital.
I do not care much about transformation problem. It is a problem that we should abandon as insolvable one. To try to find a rational solution for it seem to me an effort like a pursuit of an eternal engine. The right solution was to see that eternal engine was impossible.
I want to ask Mohinder what kind of price theory he has. No discussion to connect it with Marx's value theory is necessary. What we need is a firm alternative to the neoclassical microeconomics. We should acknowledge that the lack of plausible price theory or microeconomics in Marxist and Heterodox economics is retarding the collapse of the neoclassical economics. Those fundamental Marxists who only want to rescue what Marx wrote are in fact helping neoclassical economists and the ideology behind it to survive.
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