TITLE:
The Motley World of “International Values”: Modes of Production on the World Market
AUTHORS:
Jørgen Sandemose
KEYWORDS:
Unequal Exchange, Marxist Analysis, International Trade, Intensity of Labour, Differences in Modes of Production
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.6 No.3,
June
9,
2016
ABSTRACT: I venture to describe the world market from the viewpoint of those
different extant modes of production which deliver commodities in “foreign”
trade. The world market is, then, understood strictly in its basic feature, as
a market for material products, all called commodities.
The term “exchange”, which has to be used with some indeterminacy to begin
with, is explained in greater detail as I proceed. In this regard, the most
important sections are nos. 2 and 3. The term “modes of production” will also
be clarified in due place, and primarily in Sections 9 and 10. I find such a
concept necessary for an adequate background description of the products which
are poured onto any market. I primarily analyze the capitalist mode of
production through the concept of intensity of labour (cf. 4 and 9), which
plays a main role even in Marx’s theory of the “modifications” of the law of
value on the world market. Also, I find what is often labelled “Karl Marx’s
theory of international values” to be correct in its foundations, and I will
take a point of departure in it—especially apparent in sections 1, 2 and 3. A
target for criticism in this article is the modern mainstream theory of
“factors of production” in so far as it is found feasible for an analysis of
the movements on the world market. This is briefly done in Section 8. In Section
6, I consider David Ricardo’s theory of “comparative advantages” as a
counter-example to that theory. I use some terrain to show that the real historical and social background of
the economic functioning of the so-called “factors”—capital, land and labour—must
be a measuring rod for whether a factor theory is viable or not. To do this, I
depend (cf. again Sections 9 and 10) to a high degree of Marx’s theory of those
factors considered as forms of organized class forces—a viewpoint which played
a central role in his preparing of the three volumes of Capital. While the Marxian theory insofar is adequate, it is also
useful in analyzing the aborted or undeveloped state of those modes of
production which, beneath the advanced capitalist one, supply the world market
with material products. This ought to become clear especially in Sections 10
and 11. As my text expands, I try to show how the said inconsistency in the
Ricardian model is based on self-contradictions in value theory, especially in
his thoughts about money and prices. I also try to show that Marx’s criticism
of Ricardo’s value theory has a potential to overcome precisely these
weaknesses; the fact that these last are mostly ignored in contemporary
literature, represents the perhaps most deadly threat against competent socialist
theory-building today. This makes it appropriate to comment on some extant,
typical Marxisant attempts to understand Marx’s position (cf. Section 5). The
theme in itself, on the other hand, is tentatively being analyzed primarily in
Section 7.