[Zhukov]

Ahem.

A command economy is any economy run by the state. Unless you are talking guild socialism, which you are not, that is what communist theory calls for.

If you can find in any marxist theory a call for "command economy", I will eat my hat. It is not what 'communist theory calls for'. Is that simple enough for you to understand the second time around, or do I have to break out the pictionary?

Von misses/hayek were clearly venting off against 'war communism', the SU had prices didn't it? It participated in the world market, right?

Shutup about "guild socialism", too.

For one, we have an advantagous exchange rate. Furthermore, you are ignoring Mexico's drug regulation policy. The FDA raises the price of drugs in America (indirectly). They also don't have Medicare, etc. You are drawing conclusions without looking at the entire situation.

But an 'advantageos exchange rate' isn't the determining factor for a products value, is it? The main determining factor in somethings value is the amount of effort put into producing it. I am not skimming over things, I included how things can drive a price up and down. Su[pply and demand? The apparently random fluctuations in price given by supply and demand no more contradict the role of value as the central regulator of the system than the movement of waves up and down on the surface denies the concept of sea level - which does go up and down according to the pull of the tides.

The FDA raises the price of drugs...

prices can be lower...

When people talk of "high" prices and "low "prices", they are clearly relating to high and low in relation to something. In relation to a price that more closely expresses the value of the thing.

You think ever modern economist is capitalist? Please. The only laissez-faire capitalist economists out there anymore are the Austrian school's.

The Economists arent Capitalists themselves, but of course they dont relate to the LTV - what would you say if I said something like "nine out of ten soviet economists recomend the Labour theory of value." Oh, and I don't care if they are laissez-faire or not, they are obviously not marxists. Wait, aren't you pleased that there are suposedly not many laissez-faire capitalists anymore?

Regarding the pill... If the said pill is made by a factory in Mexico and then sold at higher than value prices in the US, then what happens is that the factory owner is taking advantadge of the fact that "socially necessary labour" to make them in the US is higher and therefore he can sell them higher. But in a perfect market what would eventually happen is that all the other pill producers will move their operations to Mexico and competition would eventually drive prices down to a level close to its real value. The problem is that perfect markets do not exist. The case is that the Big 5 pharmaceutical companies have a monopoly control over the market and can fix the prices that they want, and people in the US are forced to pay extorsionate prices for their pills.

Marx gives a good example for LTV with diamonds:

"Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on the earth's surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an average, a great deal of labour-time. Consequently much labour is represented in a small compass. Jacob doubts whether gold has ever been paid for at its full value. This applies still more to diamonds. According to Eschwege, the total produce of the Brazilian diamond mines for the eighty years, ending in 1823, had not realised the price of one and-a-half years' average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of the same country, although the diamonds cost much more labour, and therefore represented more value. With richer mines, the same quantity of labour would embody itself in more diamonds, and their value would fall. If we could succeed at a small expenditure of labour, in converting carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks. In general, the greater the productiveness of labour, the less is the labour-time required for the production of an article, the less is the amount of labour crystallised in that article, and the less is its value; and vice versâ, the less the productiveness of labour, the greater is the labour-time required for the production of an article, and the greater is its value. The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productiveness, of the labour incorporated in it."

I could be asking you the same thing.

No, seriously, I gave you my sources, I would be inteested to see where you got your 'communist theory' from. The dictionary perhaps?

“The value of any commodity, therefore, to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.

“The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people.”
WEALTH OF NATIONS, CHAPTER 5

“What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself”

I'm happy with this. If ou don't think Labour has anyhting to do with value, oh well. BTW, the "socialist calculation debate" continued into the 90's with Allin Cottrell and Paul Cockshott. I haven't read their books ("Calculation, Complexity and Planning: The Socialist Calculation Debate Once Again", "Information and Economics: A Critique of Hayek", "Socialist Planning after the Collapse of the Soviet Union" and "Value, Markets and Socialism"), but thanks for including their (as yet not-disproven) stance in your original post.