The Motley World of “International Values”: Modes of Production on the World Market

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.