Is It An Equilibrium Theory?
Some Marxists such as Thomas T. Sekine have interpreted Marx's law of value as a purely theoretical principle of market equilibrium which has no application to empirical reality. This raises the question of how we verify that it is a "law" at all. Others such as Paul Mattick argued that Marx offered no theory of market equilibrium, only a dynamic theory of enlarged economic reproduction. In reality, markets were rarely in equilibrium anyway (that was more a hypothesis used by economists, or a euphemism for "price stability"), and what explained the market behaviour of individuals and groups was precisely the imbalances between supply and demand propelling them into action. On this interpretation, capitalist development is always imbalanced development which, typically, the state tries to mitigate or compensate for.
Read more about this topic: Law Of Value
Famous quotes containing the word equilibrium:
“There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)