Thanks a lot! I have to digest some of what you mentioned before I feel like I can say I understand this. Yet I can say that the appeal of all of the thinkers you mentioned is that they systematize some of Marx's insights. I don't know if/where they diverge from more established Marxist thinkers but the insights seem worth the effort.

Also, just like you, my background is STEM, so the mathematical treatment matches that type of brain.

Once again, thanks for such a detailed reply!

[–] Sebrof@hexbear.net 2 points 5 months ago

I get the mathematical treatment helping in ways! Glad to see another STEM person into Marx! Since you already got the math down then you could jump into Wright's paper Nonstandard Labor Values or his thesis after feeling comfortable with input output tables. I would also look at his early blog posts to see how he explains it with a simple network of an economy. Whenever I do any of the math for this I always start with drawing a network of labor and product flows, and money flows. Physics trained me to "draw a diagram" and so that's just how I approach this now.

And a reason I appreciate Wright's work is it tries to bring Marx back to Sraffa, while offering a correction to the transformation problem that appears in his work. But I am still not knowledgeable enough to speak of all the divergences. One, is that we can have two different equations for, or ways of measuring, a labor value.

The standard one that Marx works with is a "technical" labor value that isn't commensurate with a measurement of price - it just measures the labor necessary to produce a good solely due to technical requirements of the means of production. The other measure is the non-standard or "institutional" labor value that is commensurate with price (so no transformation problem). This measures the labor necessary to produce a good due to technological and institutional requirements (the 'institution' of capitalist exploitation). When exploitation disappears then non-standard values reduce down to standard values.

If capitalists increase their profit and this profit is realized as use values for the capitalist then it requires workers (somewhere) to work more for the production of these use values compared to the production of their own use values. More surplus value is produced that doesn't go to the workers. But the technical requirements of production have not changed in such a case - so standard values have not changed. If wages are kept constant as profits increase then we see an increase in price (In this model). This price increase can't be explained by the standard measure of value, but can be explained by the non-standard measure. Standard values "stop short" of measuring value commensurate with price.

So some divergences between Marx and Wright may occur where Wright would accuse Marx of working with a standard measure of value when a non-standard measure would apply when discussing price, and vice versa. But I don't think it would change the main conclusions of Max's work.

I would like to go through Capital with this lens and spot any divergences or ways in which this framework may clarify things for me. Just need time, discipline, and probably many lifetimes lol