Leszek Kolakowski on the Marxian LTV

Presuming that sci.econ is frequented by a few who know something of
economics, I'm curious as to their judgment as to Bohm-Bawerk's and
Leszek Kolakowski's take on Marx's LTV:

This, following Kolakowski, is the center of Bohm-Bawerk's argument
against Marx:


"1) Value in Marx's sense cannot be measured quantitatively, partly
(but not solely) because there is no way of reducing different kinds
of
labour to a common measure;


2) prices depend on many factors, not only value, and we cannot
ascertain the quantitative importance of value in relation to the
others;


3) therefore the statement that value governs the movement of prices
and social relations is both arbitrary (because it is not clear on
what
ground we are asked to believe that value is determined by
labour-time)
and scientifically useless, for it does not help us to explain the
movement of prices, still less to foresee it." (See Vol. II)


Kolakowski, discussing Hilferding's defense of Marx, goes on to say the

he (Hilferding) accepts 1) and 2), above, but denies that they affect
Marx's theory, "since it does not purport to explain actual terms of
exchange but only to discover the general laws of change, and these
are subordinate to the law of value."


Kolakowski then says: "We need only repeat here the remarks we have
already made in discussing _Capital_ (in Vol. I). In the empirical
sciences we generally define a law as a statement that in such and
such
particular conditions, such and such phenomena always occur. Clearly
the statement that the value of a commodity is equal to the amount of
socially necessary labour put into it is *not a law* but a definition
of value. It could be proved that it was not an arbitrary definition
if
we were able to show that this particular attribute of commodities
does
govern actual price-changes; this latter proposition could then be
called a law. But here is the real difficulty: price-changes depend on

several factors---the average rate of profit, the supply-demand ratio,

value, etc.---and we cannot ascertain their quantitative
distribution."
(Id., emphasis added by HW)

Your views, gentlemen?

HW

.

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