Review of Money and Totality by Fred Moseley — The Internationalists

This is a substantial book which the author admits has been 20 years in the making. [1] It deals primarily with Moseley’s own “Macro-Monetary” interpretation of Marx’s economic writings and takes up and rebuts criticisms of this interpretation. However, the book also looks critically at the major interpretations of Marx’s economic work, by Marxist academic economists, which have emerged in the last 100 years, giving a brief description of them and critically examining their failings. Many people may not realise this, but for the greater part of the twentieth century the accepted view among academic Marxist economists, which was generally known as the Standard Interpretation (SI), was that Marx made a fundamental mistake in his economic analysis which needed to be corrected. The key issue behind this is the so-called “transformation” problem, namely the transformation of values into prices of production. The SI and its offshoots claim that Marx failed to do this correctly and his work needs to be corrected. A number of corrections have been proposed and a further number of variations of these corrections themselves put forward in ever greater complexity. Moseley shows how these criticisms and corrections are founded on a misinterpretation of Marx’s work; and that the corrections each violate some other key aspect of Marx’s work. Moseley argues that Marx did not make a mistake and there is no transformation problem whatsoever....

Important if at all interested in Marx and Marxist/Marxian economics.

Monthly Review
Review of Money and Totality by Fred Moseley

Originally published: The Internationalists (August 22, 2019)

Labor Complexity in Relation to Aggregate Marxian Value — Peter Cooper

Classical economics, including Marx, focused on economic value in real terms, i.e., a non-monetary ground for economic value expressed in markets in nominal terms as prices. That recognized that value is based on some "good" that is actual rather than nominal.

One way to do this is through a numéraire, such as gold or silver. A problem here is that monetary metals don't have actual economic value in real terms that isa determinative in production. Rather, their nominal value is depending on the cost of production. 

Marx choose labor time, following Smith and Ricardo. He expanded on their ideas, which he regarded as inadequate to the task. This is now called "the labor theory of value" (LTV), although Marx never labeled it that way. This is a bit confusing now, since "the labor theory of value" is almost automatically associated with Marx's version of it, even though it was a concept of classical economics, to which Marx was a late comer. Incidentally, while Smith and Ricardo are credited with it in the West, an LTV was first proposed by Tunisian Ibn Khaldun in the 14 century.

Neoclassical economics explains economic value in terms of marginal utility and price theory.  "Utility" purported to account for the good at the basis of value. Economic  value is determined based on opportunity cost, what has to be sacrificed in an environment where scarcity prevails to access a particular good. In nominal terms, the economic value of a good is not the market price, but rather the maximum that one is willing to pay to obtain it rather than choosing something else.

Both the labor theory of value and the marginal theory have been criticized for various reasons. And there are some other theories of economic value as well. See also Theories of Value.

The major issue now is modeling and formalization. The neoclassical theory of value based on marginalism can be formalized, although not without issues. The classical economists did not go this route, which is somewhat surprising in that Newton's work had become the paradigm of doing science. So they are not considered to be doing "economic science."

So a challenge for the labor theory of value is "doing the math."

Since value is so fundamental to economics, getting the theory right is a big deal. So far there is no universal agreement on this issue.

heteconomist

Labor Complexity in Relation to Aggregate Marxian Value
Peter Cooper

John Bellamy Foster — Absolute Capitalism

The French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1864 that “the cleverest ruse of the Devil is to persuade you he does not exist!” I will argue here that this is directly applicable to today’s neoliberals, whose devil’s ruse is to pretend they do not exist. Although neoliberalism is widely recognized as the central political-ideological project of twenty-first-century capitalism, it is a term that is seldom uttered by those in power. In 2005, the New York Times went so far as to make neoliberalism’s nonexistence official by running an article entitled “Neoliberalism? It Doesn’t Exist.”

Behind this particular devil’s ruse lies a deeply disturbing, even hellish, reality. Neoliberalism can be defined as an integrated ruling-class political-ideological project, associated with the rise of monopoly-finance capital, the principal strategic aim of which is to embed the state in capitalist market relations. Hence, the state’s traditional role in safeguarding social reproduction—if largely on capitalist-class terms—is now reduced solely to one of promoting capitalist reproduction. The goal is nothing less than the creation of an absolute capitalism. All of this serves to heighten the extreme human and ecological destructiveness that characterizes our time....

Monthly Review
Absolute Capitalism
John Bellamy Foster | Editor of Monthly Review and Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon

See also

WSWS
May Day 2019: The resurgence of the class struggle and the fight for socialism

Joseph Kishore and David North

Michael Roberts — Pluralism in economics: mainstream, heterodox and Marxist

So it was great that I had been invited to present the case for the contribution of Marxist economics, along with Carolina Alves, the Joan Robinson fellow at Girton College, Cambridge. In my presentation (see my PP here The contribution of Marxian economics), I outlined the differences in theory and policy, both micro and macro between mainstream neoclassical economics, the heterodox alternatives (Keynesian, post-Keynesian, institutional and Austrian) and the Marxist.

I see this as three ‘schools’ of thought – something that some participants from the heterodox wing found strange. Why was Marxian economics not subsumed within the heterodox? For me, the answer was simple. There was one thing that unites the mainstream and the heterodox (in every form) and one thing in which Marxian economics stood out: namely the labour theory of value and surplus value. The neoclassical and all the heterodox from Keynes to Kalecki, Robinson, Minsky, Keen and the MMTers deny the validity and relevance of Marx’s key contribution to understanding the capitalist system: that is it is a system of production for profit; and profits emerge from the exploitation of labour power – where value and surplus value arises. Value does not come from marginal utility (individual satisfaction) or marginal productivity (return on factor input) but from exploitation, realised in the sale of commodities for a profit. 

Capitalism is a monetary economy where production is for profit, not need. This glaringly obvious reality is denied by the mainstream (where there is no profit “at the margin”) and also by the heterodox who either accept marginalism or reckon profit comes from ‘monopoly’ or ‘power’ or from ‘financialisation’ – but not from the exploitation of labour power.

For me, Marx’s explanation is not only correct in reality, it is also necessary in order to clarify the very process of accumulation and endemic crisis within capitalism – all other schools of economics fall short on this.

Michael Roberts Blog
Pluralism in economics: mainstream, heterodox and Marxist

Michael Roberts

Michael Roberts — The state of capitalism at IIPPE

This year’s conference of the International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy (IIPPE) in Pula, Croatia had the theme of The State of Capitalism and the State of Political Economy. Most submissions concentrated on the first theme although the plenary presentations aimed at both....

Michael Roberts Blog
The state of capitalism at IIPPE
Michael Roberts

John Laurits — Modern Money Systems: Understanding the Monetary Mechanics of Value Parts 1&2

Welcome the new kid on the block.

John Laurits
Modern Money Systems: Understanding the Monetary Mechanics of Value Part 1

Modern Money Systems: Understanding the Monetary Mechanics of Value Part 2
ht Richard in the comments

Michael Robert — Henryk Grossman on capitalism’s contradictions (review)

Review of Henryk Grossman, Capitalism’s contradictions: studies in economic theory before and after Marx, edited by Rick Kuhn, published by Haymarket Books.

Michael Roberts Blog
Grossman on capitalism’s contradictions

Michael Roberts

Peter Cooper — On Estimating the Monetary Expression of Labor Time in a Temporal Framework

When Marx’s theory of value is interpreted in a simultaneist way, it is relatively easy to calculate the ‘monetary expression of labor time’ (or MELT).... 

There is an additional complication when it comes to measuring the temporal MELT. The temporal MELT is the appropriate measure if Marx’s theory of value is interpreted in a temporal way (as in the ‘temporal single-system interpretation’ or TSSI)....

Wonkish.

heteconomist
On Estimating the Monetary Expression of Labor Time in a Temporal Framework
Peter Cooper

Michael Roberts reviews Fred Moseley, 'Money and totality'

This pertains especially to those interested in Marx, Marxist and Marxian economics and the controversies thereof. However, being about "money," it is also of interest to those interested in MMT.

Fred Moseley debunks the major critiques of Marx's Das Capital as being without foundation.

Weekly Worker
Consistent, realistic, verifiable – Michael Roberts reviews: Fred Moseley, 'Money and totality'

There is a shorter review at Michael Robert blog.

Fred Moseley and Marx’s macro-monetary theory

Chris Dillow — Ideologue? Moi?

The difference between Marxians (realists) and Marxists (ideologues) relative to other ideologies and assorted fanatics. Simple, short, to the point and documented. Good one.

Stumbling and Mumbling
Ideologue? Moi?
Chris Dillow | Investors Chronicle

How to Use Economics & Not Be Used By Economists (4/6) — Lynn Fries interviews Ha-Joon Chang

Video and transcript.

FRIES: I'd like to ask you to tell us what's wrong with the view that one approach, the Neoclassical approach, is the right way of doing economics. In other words, what contributions from other major schools of economics, like the Marxists, the Austrians, the developmentalists, the institutionalists, the Keynesians, the Schumpeterians, the behavioralist schools, for example, show how they've differentiated themselves from the Neoclassical approach?

Real New Network
How to Use Economics & Not Be Used By Economists (4/6)

Lynn Fries interviews Ha-Joon Chang