To measure socially necessary labor time we would have to measure or would be implicitly measuring socially wasted labor time--that is the labor put into an object that is of no social utility. How would we know the clock time embodied in the taurus has not been socially wasted even if manufactured at best practice unless and until the taurus has been ex-changed into money and thereby proves itself to be (or to have been) an aliquot of socially necessary labor time? It seems to me not true that abstract labor time or socially necessary labor time have meaning outside of monetary expression. I guess this puts me on the value form side of the debate. _________ I am going to take a wild stab at something else here. Howard E noted to me in private correspondence that he has been working on semiotics, so I'll just throw this out. In the Saussurean sign we have object <=> concept <=> word While with the human use of words all the arrows are present, there is little indication that when say a vervet monkey hears the alarm call for python, it actually forms the concept of a snake in its brain; it seems to respond without knowing why it does. There seems to a three fold structure to commodity value (reproducible) commodity <=> social labor time (some aliquot thereof) <=> price Marx seems to be saying that since as we respond to price signals we have no concept that it is our social labor time that we are re-allocating in such a way to allow one class to exort and share more or less equally in the surplus labor performed by another class, we too are responding to signals in everday market society without knowing why we do. "Value therefore does not have its description branded on its forehead; it rather transforms every product of labour into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, men try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of their own social product; for the characteristic which objects of utility have of being values is as much men's social product as is their language." (CapitalI, p. 167) Yours, Rakesh
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon Apr 02 2001 - 09:57:30 EDT