Hi Nicky, and all, Well, I disagree with Chris's basic point - though I find it an extremely fruitful and illuminating argument. Value is congealed abstract labour. Only *because* of this does it have to appear as money. Fetishism is the result of not recognising this point. Once we abstract from every sensuous particularity of a commodity we are left with some'thing', viz. socially necessary labour time. 'Thing' is in scare quotes above because it is true to say that value is not a *sensuous* thing. But Chris disagree's with Marx (and me) that we nevertheless are left with congealed abstract labour once all particularity, all sensuousness, is abstracted from. This makes it difficult to understand the very first few pages of Capital except as a simple mistake, or as a Ricardian 'hangover' (Reuten &Williams' interpretation). More importantly it jepordises the quantitative dimension of value theory, since we cannot explain money magnitudes by labour time. Chris tries to introduce labour time (exploitation time) later in the presentation so as to overcome this problem. Best wishes, Andy
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