Labor Values Taken As Given

I have been considering a case in which a simple Labor Theory of Value (LTV) is a valid theory of prices of production. When, for each technique, all processes have the same organic composition of capital, prices of production are proportional to labor values. Given labor values and direct labor coefficients in each industry, an uncountably infinite number of techniques - as specified by a Leontief input-output specified in terms of physical inputs per physical outputs - satisfies these conditions.

In outlining this mathematics, I start with labor values and derive technical conditions of production as a detour on the way to prices of production. (I have also considered a perturbation of this possibility, as an application of my pattern analysis.)

Has anybody commenting on Marx actually started with labor values, taken as given, in this way? If this is a straw person, I am good company. Ian Steedman (1977) makes something like the same accusation. See the section, "A spurious impression", in Chapter 4, "Value, Price, and Profit Further Considered", of his book.

But I have found examples of other approaching Marx in something like this way. I refer to von Bortkiewicz (1907) and Seton (1957), two authors taken as a precursor to the Sraffian reading of Marx. The fact that Steedman can be read as criticizing such authors complicates the claim that this literature exhibits continuity. I think others have also argued that some novelty arises in Steedman's critique insofar as he argues that labor values are redundant, since prices of production are properly calculated from technical data on production and the physical composition of wage goods.

Perhaps my examples of Bortkiewicz and Seton should not be read as propounding any large claim that Marx takes labor values as more fundamental, in some sense, than physical conditions in production processes. Rather, Bortkiewicz started from the schemes of simple and expanded reproduction at the end of Volume 2 of Capital. Since Seton, and other authors, were generalizing and commenting on Bortkiewicz, they, as a matter of path dependence, happened to keep the assumption of given labor values. One wanting to argue for a reading of Marx that I seem to be stumbling into, without any firm commitment, needs to deal with Volume 1.

I have two additional notes on rereading these references. First, I like to talk about Marx' invariants in the transformation problem. I thought I had taken this term from formal modeling in computer science. Edsger Dijkstra and C. A. R. Hoare talk about loop invariants, and I sometimes even comment my code with explicit statements of invariants. But Seton has a section titled "Postulates of Invariance".

Is Steedman disappointed in the reception of his book? Obviously, his points about the transformation problem, including the possibility of negative surplus value being consist with positive profits, under a case of joint production, have been widely discussed. But consider his exposition of simple examples intended to demonstrate that Sraffa's analysis can take into account all sorts of issues that some had argued were ignored. Consider letting how much work capitalists can get out of labor being a variable, heterogeneous types of abstract labor not reducible to one and the possibility of workers of each type exploiting others, wages being paid, say, weekly, during processes that take a year to complete, how wages relate to the rate of exploitation when a choice of technique exists, the treatment depreciation of capital, and the existence of a retail sector for circulating produced commodities. How many of these analyses have been taken up and continued by those building on Sraffa? (I think some have.)

References

• Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk (1949). Karl Marx and the Close of his System: Bohm-Bawerk's Criticism of Marx. Edited by P. M. Sweezy.
• Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz (1907). On the Correction of Marx's Fundamental Theoretical Construction in Third Volume of Capital, Trans. by P. M. Sweezy. In Bohm-Bawer (1949).
• F. Seton (1957). The "Transformation" Problem. Review of Economic Studies, 24 (3): 149-160.
• Ian Steedman (1981, first edition 1977). Marx After Sraffa, Verso.