Ricardo
Standard Commodity : : Marx
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12229713 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bruce Roberts (University of Southern Maine, corresponding author), Bruce B Roberts |
| Year | 2009 |
| Volume | 21 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 589-619 |
| Publication date | 2009-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Review of Political Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0953-8259 • E-ISSN: 1465-3982 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/09538250903214875 |
| OpenAlex | W2037448284 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 25 |
Sraffa's construct, the standard commodity, responds to Ricardo's search for an ‘invariable’ measure of value, since it is a measurement unit invariant to changes in distribution. But Sraffa suggests that there is no ‘counterpart,’ no analogous search or needed construct, for the ‘problem’ of ‘difference’ as distinct from change (‘why two commodities produced by the same quantities of labour are not of the same exchangeable value’). Difference in this sense is crucial to Marx, who distinguishes value and surplus-value from capitalist price and profit in part in order to theorize differences as systematic value transfers. In that effort, Marx repeatedly poses commodities and capitals as ‘aliquot parts’ of the whole, so that profit is a redistributed share of aggregate surplus-value. This paper shows that, when Marx's aliquot part imagery is formalized, the resulting hypothetical system represents a meaningful ‘counterpart,’ a construct with a function in Marx's analysis of difference comparable to that of Sraffa's standard commodity in analyzing distributional change. A Marxian ‘standard system’ posing each commodity as an aliquot part of the social capital (a) defines the needed labor-time unit of social account by homogenizing heterogeneous concrete labors as socially average (‘abstract’) labor while simultaneously (b) allowing the derivation of exchange-value (e.g., capitalist production price) on that scale via summation of directly and indirectly embodied labor. Indeed, Marx's approach to production prices as resulting from an inter-industry redistribution of aggregate surplus-value is shown to be algebraically identical to the calculation of labor-embodied under ‘aliquot part’ production conditions
Capitalism · Commodity · Construct (python library · Economics · Market economy · Mathematical economics · Microeconomics · Neoclassical economics · Prices of production · Profit (economics · Rate of profit · Surplus value · Value (mathematics · Economic Theory and Institutions · Economic Theory and Policy · Mathematics · Political Economy and Marxism
The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo (The works and correspondence of David Ricardo)
The psychopathology of Walrasian Marxism
Embodied labour and competitive prices
Quantifying Abstract Labor
Mr. Sraffa's Standard Commodity and the Rate of Exploitation
Recent Developments in the Labor Theory of Value
Recent developments in the labor theory of value
Marx's labour theory of value revisited
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Theories of Surplus Value
On the Principles of Political Economy, and Taxation
Lectures on the Theory of Production
Essays on Marx's Theory of Value
The Value of Money the Value of Labor Power and the Marxian Transformation Problem
Global Restructuring and Neoliberal Labor Market Regulation in Europe
Value and Price of Production
Exploitation and the Labour Theory of Value
Contribution To the Critique of Political Epistemology
Marx's (not Ricardo's) 'Transformation Problem
Weaving a Tangled Web
Marx after Steedman
The transformation non-problem and the non-transformation problem
The logic of prices as values∗
| Citations per year | 0.45 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Highly cited | No |