The value-form

Where money is considered, its role in this Sraffian interpretation of Marx is limited. For Saad-Filho (2002 24), As the analysis is primarily concerned with the relationship between the value and price systems, money has no autonomous role and, when considered at all, it is merely a numeraire. A key defence of Marx s theory, against the Sraffian critique, is to argue that the Srafffians do not take money seriously. An alternative strand of value theory that corrects this mistake is the value-form tradition, which emphasised the importance of money for value analysis, because value only appears in and through price (ibid. 27). As a way of testing the possibility that money can be taken seriously in the input-output approach, it can be explored how the preceding analysis of the Kalecki principle can be reconciled with the value-form approach. 

At the very start of Capital, volume 1, Marx (1976) defines commodities as having a double existence, as useful objects (use-values) and as exchange-values. The use-value of a commodity is the physical quality it bestows to the user of the commodity. As an example, Marx indicates that the commodity could have use-value directly as a means of subsistence, i.e. an object of consumption, or indirectly as a means of production (ibid. 125). Indeed, it is these two different use-values that are the basis for 

Marx s two great departments of production in the reproduction schema. For exchange between such use-values to take place, however, they must also have exchange-value. 

For Marx the value-form is expressed in monetary prices. Labour-time embodied in use-values can only be socially validated as value when as commodities they are sold for money. Money is the form in which commodities appear as exchange-values in the market place. In their exposition of this value-form approach, Reuten and Wiliams (1989 53) conclude, In bourgeois society...labour and the products of labour are thus socially recognized as useful only by assuming the form of value money.  

From this perspective the embodied labour coefficients, employed in the Sraffian interpretation of Marx, are based on an exclusive focus on the use-value aspect (ibid. 54). Furthermore, These constructs inhibit the account of a capitalist economy as an essentially monetary system (ibid. 54). As argued by Clarke  

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Although Marx himself specified value in terms of labour embodied, the Sraffian Marxists are charged with calculating labour values without recourse to their validation in the market place as money. It may be that Sraffians have implicitly assumed that what is produced is sold, but the lack of importance attached to monetary questions has left their approach open to the value-form critique. 

As a contribution to this debate, it could be argued that the earlier derivation of the Kalecki principle provides a way of conserving both the labour embodied concept and the value-form. This is very straightforward, on the assumption of volumes 1 and 2 of Capital, that prices and values are equivalent. With p the vector of money prices and v the vector of embodied labour values,... 

What is more, these equally valid ways of defining value are consistent with a macroeconomic interpretation of the autonomous role of money. Since under the Kalecki principle capitalists earn what they spend, the social validation of the market, led by capitalist investment and consumption, is the starting point for economic activity. Commodities are only produced, labour is only employed, if capitalists cast into circulation the money required for sales to be realized - for labour embodied in commodities to become socially necessary. Since money, with its specific role in a capitalist economy, is so central to the Kalecki principle, a possible synthesis can be suggested with the value-form approach without, that is, compromising the use of a Leontief/Keynesian multiplier framework together with embodied labour categories. 

Instead of measuring the value of labour power in the traditional way as the labour embodied in commodities consumed by workers, an attempt is made to measure its value-form the value-form of total money wages. 

Hence, Foley (1982 42) argues, the most central of Marx s claims about the transformation of values into prices of production, that profit arises from unpaid labour time, is sustained. .. A direct correspondence is established between surplus value and money profits. This holds regardless of how prices are determined, including the Sraffian price equation (8.2). Moreover, prices can systematically deviate from values without damaging this aggregate relationship. Even if the money price of goods consumed by workers deviates from the labour embodied in these commodities, which Foley argues renders the traditional labour embodied definition of the VLP irrelevant, the value-form definition of VLP is completely operational. 

It should be noted, however, that our application of the new interpretation does not imply that the traditional labour embodied definition of value should be completely abandoned. Foley (2000 30) is open to the possibility that there may be a role for both the new and traditional interpretations of the value of labour power. As Appendix 4 shows, the labour embodied definition of the value of labour power is nested in the input-output model of the circulation of money between departments of production, regardless of how prices are defined. The deviation of prices from values does not modify the constituent role of the labour embodied measure in the interindustry monetary circuit. It is only when a macroeconomic aggregation is developed under price-value deviations, and in the derivation of the scalar Keynesian multiplier, that a switch to the value-form definition is required. 

Reuten, G. and Williams, M. (1989) The Value-Form and the State The Tendencies of Accumulation and the Determination of Economic Policy in Capitalist Society, London Routledge. 

Stage II begins when the conversion becomes linear with time (see Fig. 6.18). It is assumed that this coincides with the disappearance of micelles and the cessation of particle nucleation. The number of particles Np in stage II is fixed at the value formed in stage I and given by Eq. (6.229). 

Using 5.6 X 10 M for x, we can recalculate [HF] and solve for x again. This time we find that the answer is still 5.6 X 10 M so there is no need to proceed further. In general, we apply the method of successive approximation until the value of x obtained for the last step does not differ from the value formed in the previous step. In most cases, you will need to apply this method only twice to get the correct answer. 

The number of polymer chains in the ideal CRP system remains constant at the value formed by initiation at time 0, [P—X]o. The theoretical degree of polymerization is determined by the molar ratio of concentration of reacted monomer to the concentration of chains, DP = ([M]o — [M])/[P—X]q. Quantitative initiation allows the synthesis of polymer with special architectures and end-functionahties. 

In Stage II the eonversion is linear with time (see Fig. 6.15) as micelles have already disappeared and no new particle is nucleated. The number of M/P particles Np in Stage II is xed at the value formed in Stage I and is given by Eq. (6.199). 

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