>> I have updated one of my essays:
>> 
>> This article presents a Sraffian interpretation of Marx and
>> investigates how much of the Labor Theory of Value is logically
>> viable. The interpretation is presented by means of a simple two good
>> example, thus restricting to arithmetic the mathematics needed to
>> follow this exposition. The model upon which this example is based,
>> however, easily generalizes to N goods, and derives from work done
>> decades ago by John Eatwell...
>> http://csf.colorado.edu/pkt/pktauthors/Vienneau.Robert/sraffa.html

> It would be honest of me to state that I understand none of this. Nevertheless, 
> may I ask the following:  as a matter of economic *philosophy*, not theory, 
> may I sensibly contend that things *ought* to be valued by the human 
> effort required to produce them?  By "produce" I intend to include 
> *anything* requiring human effort, even if only to pick it off the ground 
> and put it in a useful place.  The market-place "value" is quite another 
> matter, affected by many factors other than the labor content.
>
> If I may be permitted to so contend, does this not have implications in 
> economic theory?   Was this the path Marx was taking -- starting with 
> a philosophy of man and going then into the theory of economics?
> 
> If that is so, then I would suggest that too many economists get it 
> the other way around: economics first-- man derived therefrom.


If by starting with philosophy, and then doing the economics, Marx had
actually produced an economic theory that worked in the real world,
then you might have a point. As Marxist economics is useless as a
blueprint for running that real world, I think it might be difficult
to sustain .

My personal view of " free market " economics ( not limiting myself to
Liberal, Neo Liberal, Classical ,Neo Classical schools, but generally
mainstream stuff like Smith, Ricardo, Mill, Marshall etc ) is that it
is an attempt to describe what humans actually do. Not what they ought
to, but what they do do.

To put it in terms of another science....physiology. Thiswas held back
for centuries by the prescriptions of Galen and such.....who had
started with a philisophy of what " ought " to be, rather than
gathering experimental ( or factual ) evidence and then building the
philisophy that explains that evidence.

Other examples abound in other sciences. Astronomy and Earth centric
solar systems, phlogiston and chemistry, ....you can make your own
list.

Perhaps the investigation should come before the philosophy ?