Fred (Hi Fred!) writes: >... But that does not mean that abstract labor is the same thing as > money, as it is in value-from theory. It is an absurdity to suggest that any VF interpretation holds the position that Abstract Labour and Money 'are' the same thing. A source of the misunderstandings between VF approaches and Fred is that the former unpacks the notion of 'being' as connoted in the English verb 'to be', whereas this argument of Fred's seem to take it as a simple concept. The VF position of Reuten and Williams (1989) is that Money is the sole actual (near) autonomous manifestation of Value and so of Abstract Labour. What exists is concrete labour, that is really abstracted into Value by (to crudely jump levels of abstraction) the system of ubiquitous capitalist markets - the more concrete conditions of existence of the Value-form. Fred may see this as obscurantist - even mystical. But it seems much less so to me than his hopping between alleged analytical/logical priority of abstract labour over money, and some ontological commitment to the independent existence of abstract labour. Neither one of these follows from the other. Fred now seems to agree that it is incoherent to commit oneself ontologically to the independent existence of abstract labour. But wants to insist that Marx's conceptual positing of abstract labour as a moment, textually prior (and systemically prior) to Money, implies that Money is logically derived from Abstract Labour. Clearly it is not - the most we can coherently allow Fred is that Money is 'derived', in the systematic dialectical presentation, as a necessary condition of existence of Abstract Labour. And that is the converse of deriving Money logically from a full-formed autonomous concept of Abstract Labour, and prohibits any ontological commitment to abstract labour independent of its systemic interconnections. Comradely greetings, michael
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