From: Fred Moseley (fmoseley@MTHOLYOKE.EDU)
Date: Thu Jul 08 2004 - 14:40:43 EDT
On Fri, 2 Jul 2004, Rakesh Bhandari wrote: > At 9:45 AM -0400 7/2/04, Fred Moseley wrote: > >On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Howard Engelskirchen wrote: > > > >> Hi Paul, > >> > >> You wrote: > >> > >> Metrologists want a standard of weight that does not itself > >> 'contain' weight. > >> > >> My understanding is that the standard for measuring length is the wave > >> length emitted by an isotope of krypton. I haven't read the issue of > >> Science you refer to, but my guess would be that if meterologists are able > >> to define weight in terms of something that is not weight it will be because > >> they can reduce weight to that property. You might be able to avoid the > >> problem of a mass absorbing mass from the atmosphere, but you won't avoid > >> the problem that in comparing two things they must be comparable under some > >> common aspect which they share. Two things are distant from one another > >> because they both have existence in space (Marx's critique of Bailey). Two > >> things are comparable in the property of what we now call weight because > >> e.g. they both resist acceleration or whatever other common aspect turns out > >> to solve the kilogram problem. > >> > >> Howard > > > > > >Howard, are you suggesting that money as measure of value must be a > >commodity today? > > > >Comradely, Fred > > I am. Some sum of money, say $1000, has to stay constant as a > quantity not of one commodity but a basket of commodities--e.g. x > barrels of oil, y oz of gold, and z bushels of grain. This is > probably what Greenspan aims to do more than maintain price stability > per se. And this is what Greenspan has to do if he wants the dollar > to remain the closest appromixation to world money (and thus preserve > the attendant privileges to the US financial sector and US govt). So > just as Greenspan seems to be running a modified gold standard, I > subscribe to a modified Germer theory of commodity money. There can > at best be a partial dissolution of the fetishistic commodity basis > of money as long as capitalist relations of production prevail. To > maintain the commodity basis of and the constant value of the dollar, > Greenspan has to sacrifice the economy at the altar not of gold but > a basket of things. > Rakesh, how would you determine the MELT (the money new-value produced per hour of socially necessary labor-time) in your suggested case that money is a "basket" of commodities, rather than a single commodity? "The quantity of labor-time required to produce a unit of a "basket" of commodities" makes no sense, because a basket of commodities HAS NO UNIT, in physical terms. > And at any rate, aren't we agreed on the basics? I think so. But the determination of the MELT in today's monetary system is an important question in Marx's theory which has not yet been adequately answered. Comradely, Fred
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