Dear Paul Thanks, via you, to Jimmy W for the additional Sieber. >The passage from Capital on value and labour that I had in mind actually >came from the second edition. It is: 'Human labour-power in its fluid state > creates value, but is not in itself value.' (Capital I, Penguin, p. 143). >There is actually an earlier instance which I found in Theories of Surplus >Value I, p. 135: 'A quantity of labour has no value, it is not a commodity, > but is that which transforms commodities into values...' This conflates two issues: 'Laboour is/not value' 'Labour has/no value' Mandel, carchedi, and others who, like Sieber, assert 'labour *is* value' are very clear that labour is not a commodity and hence 'has' no value. The chain of thought seems to be: labour has no value because it is what gives commodities value, hence it 'is' value. Compare: a wavelength is not coloured, it is what gives the experience of colour in the normal human eye, hence , e.g., light of a certain wavelength 'is' red light. In both cases the final conflation of cause and effect is contestable. 17 Bristol Road, Brighton, BN2 1AP, England
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