Editing Exchange value (section)

== Relation to mainstream economics ==
In modern [[neoclassical economics]], exchange value itself is no longer explicitly theorised. The reason is that the concept of money-price is deemed sufficient in order to understand trading processes and markets. Exchange value thus becomes simply the price for which a good will trade in a given market which is identical to what Marx refers to as price. These trading processes are no longer understood in economics as [[social]] processes involving human giving and taking, getting and receiving, but as technical processes in which rational, self-interested economic actors negotiate prices based on subjective perceptions of [[utility]]. Market realities are therefore understood in terms of supply and demand curves which sets price at a level where supply equals demand. Professor John Eatwell criticizes this approach as follows:
{{quotation|Since the markets are driven by average opinion about what average opinion will be, an enormous premium is placed on any information or signals that might provide a guide to the swings in average opinion and as to how average opinion will react to changing events. These signals have to be simple and clear-cut. Sophisticated interpretations of the economic data would not provide a clear lead. So the money markets and [[foreign exchange market]]s become dominated by simple slogans—larger fiscal deficits lead to higher interest rates, an increased money supply results in higher inflation, public expenditure bad, private expenditure good—even when those slogans are persistently refuted by events. To these simplistic rules of the game there is added a demand for governments to publish their own financial targets, to show that their policy is couched within a firm financial framework. The main purpose of insisting on this government commitment to financial targeting is to aid average opinion in guessing how average opinion will expect the government to respond to changing economic circumstances and how average opinion will react when the government fails to meet its goals. So "the markets" are basically a collection of overexcited young men and women, desperate to make money by guessing what everyone else in the market will do. Many have no more claim to economic rationality than tipsters at the local racetrack and probably rather less specialist knowledge.<ref name=eatwell>[https://prospect.org/world/global-money-trap-can-clinton-master-markets/ Eatwell, John (1993) - The Global Money Trap; Can Clinton Master The Markets?] in ''The American Prospect''</ref>}}