DJP
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jondwhite wrote:The reason the party does not attract more people and younger people than it does is a distinct cultural tradition reflected in attitudes among members broadly along the lines of rejecting scientific research in marketing and communication techniques over the last half century.
I guess this is where AIDA comes in!
jondwhite wrote:Also a low level of party education among members seems to compound this and be a result of it.???
gnome wrote:That may be partly the case but that begs the obvious question – why the difference in average age? Perhaps we’ll find the answer to that one tomorrow.I think part of the answer is that we are stuck with using terminology that has been dirtied by over a century of abuse by leftists of various kinds. But I don’t see any easy answer to this problem.The second factor has got to be that our use of new media has been pretty feeble. It’s been less than 12 months that we’ve had a website that’s fit for purpose. (incidentally I’ve been working on a soon to be revealed update for the worlsocialism.org site recently)The audience for conspiracy type films on the internet is huge, and this is where the bulk of Zeitgeist viewers come from.But I don’t think there are any magic solutions…
This newly re-posted audio file will be of interest:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/audio/marxist-and-monetarist-theories-inflation
Incidentally, in connection with my theoryandpractice.org.uk site and distributed through radicalbooks.co.uk I will soon be issuing a pamphlet debunking the ‘creationist’ school of banking theory, as well as some other things. Anyway self promotion over…An important thing to bear in mind in these debates is what is meant by ‘money’. The standard definition these days probably does include bank deposits, whether or not created through the issue of loans, so by definition banks do expand the money supply by issuing loans – but only because the definition of money makes no differentiation between credit and debit.The real question I guess is “what creates real wealth?” (or purchasing power) and if real wealth can be increased or destroyed by issuing or paying back loans.
gnome wrote:One link doesn’t exactly litter our forums. Anyway it’s interesting and educational to see what these people are saying, particularly for those who don’t otherwise know. For example, I was unaware that the SWP viewed World War Two as an imperialist war……..maybe I should have known that before, but now I do.OK fair enough
I don’t think we should ignore any current. But we should also be aiming our attentions to where the people are. And that is largely outside the ‘left’ and the various ‘activist’ groups.
A glut of free goods may cause a temporary fall in prices.. It is peferctly possible for goods created by socialised labour in one area to be sold as commodities in another region of the world. Surely this would just be giving a free gift to commercial capitalists?Or perhaps I haven’t grasped what it is you’re talking about.
Young Master Smeet wrote:Well, if I exchange one valueless item for another, both of which have a large price figure, there is no value exchanged. Two million pound opaintings could be so exchanged, and amillion pound price deal established without any comensurate value being involved.But the wealth (or value) that the money represents has to come from somewhere. The total value, that has been created in production is just being re-distributed.
Young Master Smeet wrote:I wouldn’t agree that price is an expression of value, price is a definite relation expressed in commodity money. The way I see it, it’s like saying total rulers equal total lengths, and there are more lengths than have been measured.But if value is not realised is it value at all? Does this not instead indicate a change in the average socialy necessary labour time?
Young Master Smeet wrote:Yes, I suspect so, certainly I have one book at home that talks of the “Value domain” and the “price domain” in Marx as related but separate things.To me the single system interpretation seems to make more sense, but then I’m not claiming to have studied all the issues or to fully understand them.
Duncan K. Foley wrote:In this [the single system] approach money is the form of value and labor its substance. Money prices are a form of value. Constant and variable capital are the sums of money laid out by capitalist firms to initiate production, and surplus value the total of gross profits (of which interest and rent form subsidiary parts) realized. These money value flows can be translated into labor time through a “monetary expression of labor” coefficient which represents the amount of money value equivalent to a unit of labor time in each period.From this single-system perspective there is no need to calculate a separate accounting system of “labor values”, that is, coefficients expressing the amount of labor time embodied in individual commodities, as in the “dual-system” interpretation of Marx’s theory of value…http://homepage.newschool.edu/~foleyd/marxnoneq.pdfYoung Master Smeet wrote:The price paid for valueless objects can come out of general wealth, not just surplus value, and it is undetermined (anyone can pay any price they like). they establish the concept that price can be independent of value. This opens the door to the idea that prices can be under value, and generally a large chunk of value goes unrealised.All prices paid come out of the general wealth, which in a capitalist society is the same thing as the total value in society. Prices can be under value for sure, they can also be over, but isn’t the fact the some prices and under value that allows for others to be above?But since all prices are just an expression of an amount of the total value, you cannot create more value by just creating more money, to do so just decreases the amount of value that a certain amount of money represents. So I’m still not sure what it would mean if prices and value did not equal in aggregate. Would this not imply that you could create wealth by just raising prices?I know some interpreters of Marx refer to price and value as being to separate systems, is this the school from which you are drawing?
Young Master Smeet wrote:DJP wrote:In Marx total value = total price is true by definition. To say something else is to depart from what Marx said, which would mean having to use a completely different analysis.Marx was wrong on this one, his maths on the transformation problem have been exploded, and all other attempts to make that work are truly tortuous, it’s easier to say that prices can’t equal value.
Having re-read Kliman’s ‘Reclaiming Capital’ I’m not so sure about this. The so-called ‘transformation problem’ is not a problem at all. The problems come from mis-interpretating what Marx wrote.A further consequence of total prices not equaling value would be that all of Marx’s arguments about exploitation go out the window.
Quote:The simplest disproof are antiques and arts: their prices are not at all determined by value (since they are unique and cannot be reproduced).I don’t think this supports at all what you are saying; the price paid from them comes out of the total surplus value, unless they are bought with funny money how can this not be the case?
Young Master Smeet wrote:Actually, I would say the opposite, goods only sell at their value by accident, and Marx was wrong, total prices don’t equal total values (and, I suspect it would be the case that a good deal of value goes unrealised as price). I think value is more like a sort of gravity for prices, which aere subject to other forces as well.Interesting. I would agree that for an individual commodity, price = value only by accident, I think Marx would have said this?’Value’ is expressed in terms of socially necessary labour-time, ‘exchange-value’ in price. Socially necessary labour time is determined through the mechanism of market exchange. If capital fails to become valorised, i.e expanded in production, it is because it has not been invested in socially necessary avenues.In Marx total value = total price is true by definition. To say something else is to depart from what Marx said, which would mean having to use a completely different analysis.The above is as much a question as a statement.
The thing is, though it’s probably only important if you want to be an ultra-geek, as far as I know, Marx never used the term ‘labour theory of value’ to refer to his theories.Marx didn’t set out to come up with a theory to explain the individual prices of commodities (though his theory does this) but a theory to explain how labour is regulated in a capitalist exchange economy.A lot of introductions to Marx say that he said that the price of individual commodities gravitate towards there value (socially necessary labour time) equivalent but I don’t think this is necessarily the case. All Marx said was that total value equals total price and that value and surplus value is distributed between capitalists through the competitive struggle for profits.In Capital 1 Marx, to illustrate that value is created in production and not exchange, presumes that price equals value. In the later volumes this presumption is dropped to explain the workings of the market and competition.
