ABSTRACT
I will mention one more, directly concerned with his theory of value. The question of demand or use-value as a factor has been referred to already. But what of choice of techniques? When I discussed this question with the Norwegian Jon Elster, he made the point that Marx had to assume that techniques were given and could not be affected by relative prices. I objected that capitalists, in pursuit of profit, would be influenced by relative prices of, for example, machines and labour in choosing the method of production. Elster replied that Marx could not even contemplate such a possibility ‘because he was a Hegelian’. How so?, I inquired. He replied that if values were ‘essence’ and prices ‘appearance’, he could not possibly allow prices to underlie values rather than vice versa. If choice of techniques were affected by price, then prices would be co-determinants of the quantity of labour used to produce a commodity. In an unpublished note, he wrote:
If the technology depends on prices, and values on the technology, then values no longer have an epistemological independence of prices. Values, prices and technology must be determined simultaneously. If we admit changing preferences, values can even be affected by demand. If a shift in demand induces a change in relative prices, and thus a change in technology, then the change in preferences will have caused the ensuing change in commodity values. (Quoted from ‘Lecture notes on Marxism’, kindly supplied by their author)
This seems unanswerable to me.
