Re Gil 6364 --Firstly, I'd like to ask Jerry (I do doubt other people are following this...) to check the original exchange between Gil & me following his "Copernican thought experiment". Some of the things I wrote briefly now --and I have no so much time at the moment-- would require the context of the original discussion to be properly understood. [...] >Hmm, this is a bit loaded, isn't it? First, as mentioned in a previous >post, I never suggested that analytical marxism was akin to a Copernican >revolution in Marxism I never said you did so. I referred and cited the piece where you suggested a research program that could imply a "Copernican" advance regarding Marx. You did use the "Copernican" analogy. My purpose was to show Jerry that this is more usual than he originally suggested in a post. --rather I posed the more specific question, couldn't >it be considered a theoretical advance if we were able to establish all of >Marx's valid results without reference to the theoretical construct of >labor values? To give to this exchange a more constructive purpose: could you please define what do you understand by "labor values"? And, why did you think "labor values" are a "theoretical construct"? Much of my loaded wording --I have no problem in acknowleding this as it seems you have-- is due to the fact that in the original exchange I kept asking you the same questions without receiving any response. Now, again, you're writing in the same imprecise way... >Second, of course, it is false to claim that only Marxists, >"Ptolemaic" or otherwise, are "interested in the way people spend their >labor-time...to get their living conditions." But if the main purpose of your "Copernican thought experiment" was to take out "labor values", what room would be left to study "...the way people spend their labor-time...to get their living conditions."? Moreover, if the general purpose of Marx's theory is to study the way in which historical people get their living conditions through their associated labor, and the way the products of these social labor are appropriated, the possible outcome of your "Copernican thought experiment" has nothing to do with the original theory supposedly it could supersede. It will be a theory about any self-reproducing natural entity, not a theory of a human historical society. A.R. > >Gil > >
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