Talk:Law of value
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details. | ||||||||||||
| ??? | This article has not yet received a rating on the quality scale. | ||||||||||||
| ??? | This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale. | ||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
I'm not sure if this qualifies for a POV label, but it does seem to be a little biased towards Marxism in some sections.--Catquas 01:14, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
This is a term from Marxism. Ricardo may have understood the concept but never used the term itself. Smith, Greenspan and Soros certainly have nothing to do with it. In an effort to avoid POV this page has obscured the very POV it is meant to describe: the POV of the "law of value". --Cplot 15:46, 1 June 2006 (UTC)
Contents |
[edit] Smith's hidden hand
I took the pen to the ludicrous statement "This assumption is a simple faith or belief, but not really explained." Only an economically illiterate marxist could say that! Not only does Smith explain it, in the same paragraph, but so have countless economists since (try Milton Friedman), game theorists John Von Neumann, Robert Axelrod) evolutionary biologists (Richard Dawkins) and philosophers Dan Dennett, Robert Nozick). The invible hand is a well understood concept. ElectricRay 22:47, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] LOV/LTV
Not sure why there's a separate article as the same ground is covered in the labor theory of value.--Jack Upland 06:20, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I would agree. The law of value should probably just refer to the other discussions of LTV, exchange-value, or Marxian value and then briefly explain the meaning of the phrase "law of value" itself. Instead this page tries to do all the work of explainiing related terms instead of just "law of value". Also as with many things on this page, Smith's invisible or hidden hand have nothing to do with the "Law of Value". --Cplot 00:51, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Comment by the author
I wrote this article because there was nothing on it in the wikipedia, and not for the benefit of either Marxist doctrinaires or Friedmanite fanatics, nor for the benefit of an intellectual elite, but for the interested general reader who wants to find out more about the abstract concept of the law of value and what it signifies. A law of value was implied by Ricardo, as Marx himself suggests, but only Marx & Engels referred explicitly to this term by name as a specific concept, and the economics literature correctly attributes the idea to them. I have used a few quotes from Greenspan, Smith, Soros etc. to elucidate what is involved in the concept and show its possible relevance to modern discussions about market forces. This is perfectly acceptable procedure, and done in many wikipedia articles to clarify the intention of an author, and distinguish it from others. I would prefer it if this article was not changed by every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to get in his two-bits worth about the law of value or about Marxian economics, but only by qualified scholars, i.e. people who have really studied this concept thoroughly from the relevant literature. User:Jurriaan 27 February 2007 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.170.247.40 (talk • contribs)
[edit] Additional comment
The labour theory of value is not the same thing as the law of value, and any qualified economist knows that. The labour theory of value is not unique to Marx & Engels (e.g. Ricardo subscribed to it), but the concept of the law of value is unique to Marx & Engels. The accusation of bias is not valid since I carefully discuss the pro's and con's of the concept, and different interpretations. At most one could insert "Marx argues/says..." or "Marxists say..." etc. to make it clearer that a partisan view is involved. But most of it is perfectly clear from the context. The references to Austrian economics were inserted by somebody else, not me. I have just tried to indicate how Marx would have responded to them. [User:Jurriaan]] 27 February 2007
[edit] This page is in conflict with communist principles
especially at the 'why it doesnt work' section. taxation and subsidies to producers by government- the government controls the labour and they dont need taxation countertrade (forms of barter)- its not required
[edit] Author's reply
Whether or not the page conflicts with "communist principles" is not at issue here. The question in this wikipedia reference article is only whether or not it fairly represents the concept, what distinguishes it from other related interpretations, and the criticisms made of it. It is evident that when Marx refers to the law of value that he means a principle of exchange which will hold true "other things being equal". In other words, it is a generalisation about economic exchange he is making. The "counteracting influences" I mention refers to important cases in which relative exchange-values of traded products cannot be proportional to the labour-time expended on producing those products, i.e those counteracting influences distort the proportional relationship between exchange-values traded, and labour-time. There exists an article on countertrade on wikipedia and from this you may learn that countertrade is, according to researchers who have studied it, much more pervasive in the world economy than often supposed. Admittedly, this article is a difficult one to write, because neither Karl Marx nor David Ricardo explicitly formalised their definition of the law of value. Marx evidently took the idea itself as obvious, but sought to ascertain how it applied in a capitalist economy. Ricardo never referred to "the law of value" (only vaguely to "the law of values"), this is Marx's language, but Ricardo did support the thesis that the value of commodities is generally determined by labour-time, except for special cases. Marx's initial criticism of Ricardo is however that Ricardo develops his economic categories in the wrong order, and thus really assumes what has to be proved. Nevertheless Marx's treatment is clearly a further development and critique of Ricardo's theory. Because of the lack of explicit definitions, I have cited a couple of quotes by Marx & Engels in which they discuss what they call "the law of value" in more detail. The article as it stands contains plenty references, but I will endeavour to footnote the article better in future. I do not have all my sources easily available, as I researched the topic in the 1980s and wrote largely from memory. An additional problem is that among Marxian scholars the "law of value" remains a somewhat controversial topic, about which there is no perfect unanimity. All I have tried to do in the article is to convey the basic sense of what it means, how it contrasts with conventional equilibrium economics, and what criticisms are made of it. User:Jurriaan 18:06 18 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] NPOV
"The problem with Austrian economics however is that it has no explanatory power at all; all we can say about a realised price is that it reflects a subjective preference. And there are billions of subjective preferences, all different. Of course, the Austrian economist is not "subjective" at all about his own bank account, he wants his money to be there, regardless of any subjective preference by anybody else." How is this NPOV? It reads like an attack ad against Austrian economics. Cholling (talk) 14:55, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Author comment
I agree that said sentences could be construed as an attack on Austrian economics which is insufficiently neutral. However, this problem could be solved perhaps by simply rephrasing the statement in the form of a question that states what the problem is about: "However, this raises the question of what is the explanatory power of Austrian economics, if all we can say about a realised price that it is a subjective preference, given that there are billions of subjective preferences which are all different. How can we explain in that case why the Austrian economist is not "subjective" at all about his own bank account, since he wants his money to be there, regardless of any subjective preference by anybody else?". A relevant Jewish joke is the following one: "Why does a Jew respond to a question by asking another question? Reply: Why shouldn't a Jew ask a question in response to another question?". The hidden assumption is that somebody has the right, power or means to ask the questions which someone else must answer. But insofar as wikipedia aims to provide useful information about what a concept means, I think it is legitimate to alert readers to what the questions raised by the given concept are. User: Jurriaan 22:19 29 April 2008 (UTC)
