>Re Paul's [OPE-L:1800] Re: Definitions of value
>and Massimo's [OPE-L:1817]
>
>Paul
>===
>1. The value of a product is the portion of society's labour
> needed to reproduce it.
>
>Alan
>====
>
>1) Define 'needed', please
>2) Define 'reproduce', please
>
Paul
----
Needed in the sense of whast is possible to society as a whole given
its current state of knowledge and current stock of means of
production.
Reproduce is harder to define for goods like ships or power stations
that take an appreciable time to build. The labour required to build
a powerstation started today may be less than that required to build
one finished today. Under these circumstances it is an arbitrary matter
which base date one takes, so long as one uses the definitions consistently,
and applies appropriate transformations.
Paul Cockshott
wpc@cs.strath.ac.uk
http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/CS/Biog/wpc/index.html