Tag Archives: economic value

A little philosophy (value theory) today. Personally, I think it would be madness to stick a monetary value on people’s lives and base our policy choices on whether the dollars on one side of the ledger outweigh those on the other. I wrote a book about that a while ago. The considerations that lead us to think primarily in public health terms at a time like this apply just as well to other issues, from food safety to climate change. The economists who crank out monetary values of life...

Minsky’s journey from socialism to stability for capitalist profitability comes about because he and the post-Keynesians deny and/or ignore Marx’s law of value, just as the ‘market socialists’, Lange and Lerner, did. The post-Keynesians and MMTers deny/ignore that profit comes from surplus value extracted by exploitation in the capitalist production process and it is this that is the driving force for investment and employment. They ignore the origin and role of profit, except as a residual...

This is a key observation of Alfred Marshall that predicts the development of post-classical economics, which came to be dominated by neoclassical economics, although it was overshadowed for a time by Keynesianism, owing to the pressures of the time (war, depression, and another war). The key observation is this: Marshall notes that when people think about the main intellectual contribution of Adam Smith, they often point to what we now refer to as the "invisible hand" idea--that when...

Value theory in economics. Economic Sociology and Political Economy Finance, Class, and the Birth of Neoclassical Economics: The Marginalist Revolution Revisited Yair Kaldor | PhD candidate in the sociology department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a member of Koah LaOvdim (“Power to the Workers”), an Israeli labor union.

The theory of value and distribution is at the heart of economics. To be clear, when I say that it is at the center, it means that discussions of almost any topic in economics, in one way or another, depend on a certain theoretical position about the theory of value and distribution. However, most economists have no clue about it, about the centrality of value. Not only they don't understand the original and now infamous labor theory of value (LTV), that dominated between Petty and Ricardo...

Schumpeter did not like Knapp's Chartalist theory.econoblog 101Schumpeter on Knapp in his 1954 HEA Dirk Ehnts | Lecturer at Bard College Berlin

Mariana Mazzucato’s new book is a detailed exposé of the parasitic character of modern capitalism, drawing on Karl Marx’s theory of the source of value creation. But understanding the law of value is only a first step to providing an alternative to a system that cannot overcome its inevitable tendency for periodic crises and which needs to be overthrown, argues Peter Taaffe. Socialism TodayParasitic capitalism exposed Peter Taaff | general secretary of the Socialist Party of England and...

In my latest book, The Value of Everything, I have argued that such critiques are important but will remain powerless – in their ability to bring about real reform of the economic system – until they become firmly grounded in a discussion about the processes by which economic value is created. It is not enough to argue for less value extraction and more value creation. First, ‘value’, a term that once lay at the heart of economic thinking, must be revived and better understood.Value has...

I would post a link to Martin Wolf's article but it is behind a paywall at the Financial Times. So this will have to do unless you have access. Somewhat embarrassingly, Brad DeLong gets Mariana Mazzacuto's name wrong. Oh, well, I make mistakes like that, too, on occasion.Wolf review poses a very pregnant question, "… she forces us to ask ourselves what adds value to society and how to create an economic and social order that promotes that."WCEGThe extremely intelligent Martin Wolf...

Must-read in full. It's short and to the point.The meaning of "value" is one of the most pertinent questions in economics and political economy. Michael Hudson has been emphasizing this for some time, as have Marxists and Marxian. Consideration of value of other than as price revealed in competitive markets is ruled out in conventional economics by methodological assumptions. What we value and how we value it is one of the most contested, misunderstood and important ideas in economics....