Howard, thanks for your (5868). I agree in general with what you say. I don't have the time right now for a full response (we are packing up to go to Maine for two months), but a quick comment on your last paragraph. On Tue, 26 Jun 2001, howard engelskirchen wrote: > One consequence of this argument, Fred, if it is correct, is that you > cannot without a good deal of qualifying explanation easily identify money, > price and exchange value as the form of value. I think you can defend that > usage, but it invites the idea that value is a phenomenon of exchange and > that exchange is decisive from the point of view of form determination. > But it is a particular form of social labor which is value and so it is > possible also to think of that form as a crucially important value form -- > in other words the value form can refer to value as a historically > determined form of labor, and in fact that usage is common. I agree with your formulation here. Exchange-value is the form OF APPEARANCE of value. Abstract labor, as the substance of value, also has a form, a historically specific form of social labor. Chai-on's comments were helpful here (thanks, Chai-on). Although Marx sometimes used "exchange-value (or money) is the form of value" as a shorthand for "exchange-value is the form OF APPEARANCE of value." > This emphasis > on a determined form of laboring producers can be preserved with less > confusion by referring to money, price and exchange value, plainly > phenomena of exchange, as forms of appearance of something which is not > exclusively a phenomenon of exchange. That is, we insist that these, which > belong to exchange, refer to something beyond exchange to which they give > expression. I agree completely that exchange-value is a form of appearance of "something beyond exchange to which it gives expression." It is this "something else" - this "essence" - that makes a quantitative theory of exchange-value possible. I argue that value-form theory (at least in the Reuten and Williams version) does not provide a quantitative theory of exchange-value and surplus-value precisely because it rejects abstract labor as the "essence" or "substance of value". Thanks again. Comradely, Fred
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