Duncan:
"I don't know if I count as a critic of the TSS interpretation,
since I see it as a generalization of my own way of thinking
about the labor theory of value,
I agree with this generous characterisation and do not consider
Duncan a critic. I would also say the concept of the value of money,
for which the New Solution deserves full credit, also generalises
in another direction, namely to the interpretations which I call
'nondualist', namely those of Wolff/Callari/Roberts, Fred, and
Ramos/Rodriguez. These too have received the treatment Duncan describes.
The difference is that it hasn't stopped.
My approach is at least in part conditioned by the uneasy feeling that
this has gone on too long to be explained by a defect in reasoning.
If not challenged frontally, is there any reason to think it will not
continue for ever? If it had not been challenged frontally, would the
debate have reached even the stage that it has? I would like to be
convinced to the contrary.
Duncan:
"I doubt that the TSS group will succeed in a frontal assault
on other interpretations of the LTV, and I would suggest that
the constant challenges to other people either to "accept" the
TSS or prove that it is wrong are becoming counterproductive.
But no-one asks that the TSS be accepted. We ask that it be accepted
as an interpretation of the LTV.
I ask only that all interpretations are dealt with equally, that is,
as interpretations 'of' the LTV - as you put it - and not alternatives
'to' the LTV - as until extremely recently, everyone else puts it.
I consider everyone in the debate as an equal. I do not ask anyone
to accept any one view, only to accept that a variety of views exist.
I just think this courtesy has been absent from the rest of the marxist
world for sixteen years too long. I am campaigning not for a new
intolerance but for a proper and final burial of the old intolerance.
Mine is not a request to exclude any view but to have all views
represented.
Is this so unreasonable?
Alan