Andy I am afriad in this mail you use 'predicate' too idiosyncratically. I suggest you look it up in a philosophical dictionary. Popularly, it is a grammatical term naming a property or attribute, or at least something that can be affirmed or denied, of something else, called the subject. Thus Aristotle's logic is primarily a subject-predicate logic: 'Socrates (subject) is a man (predicate).' At first sight it seems value is a predicate: gold is valuable. But you then talk - as we do - of 'values' as 'objects' which grammatically would naturally fall into the subject position, so here we have left 'predicate' behind. What we have done is a Feuerbachian reversal of subject and predicate; merely metonymic rhetoric perhaps; but with money definitely more. Sentences like 'money is gold/is cattle/is paper' show money is now the value subject to which different predicates are applied in different economies. >Hello all, > >Re: many recent posts on VFT. Can I ask if the following summary >of 'value' in VFT is correct: > >When first posited within the systematic presenation, 'value' is a >predicate, under which the class of all purchased inputs and >outputs of production is subsumed. This predicate is introduced as >a necessary condition of existence of dissociation (i.e. as >necessary to association). Strictly predicates do not subsume, they apply. > >This gives us the 'commodity' as unity of use value and value. The >answer to the question 'what is value?' is at this stage simply that >'value is a *name* given to all products by people in capitalist >society'. We can elaborate upon this answer further. Since value is >a predicate, then it is valid to say that the class of objects to which >this predicate is applicable, viz. all purchased inputs to and outputs >of production, are 'values'. (And, indeed, they instantiate the 'value- >form' and are 'forms of value'). This is because the notion of a >'predicate' always implies at least two aspects: the object referred >to (the 'referent') and the name by which the object is referred to. > Here as above I think 'values' are subjects not predicates. >[An aside: I wonder where the notion of 'sense' fits in, a la Frege's >sense / reference distinction] > Possibly. I use the cognate intension/extension to refer to the money-commodity relation in a chapter in *The Culmination of Capital* eds Campbell and Reuten. >We will learn more about value and capitalism only through >developing the systematic presentation. In this further systematic >development we learn that 'money' must exist. At the outset, >money, too, is a predicate this time denoting a commodity, or >simply a bit of paper, or whatever, for which all commodities >(excluding the money commodity, should it exist) are exchanged. > Predicates cannot exchange. But in C-M-C I would say value is the subject predicated successively with three different bearers, because of the reversal mentioned above. Commonsense would say three objects with value changed places. generally I do not find the term useful - it isn't in Hegel! Chris 17 Bristol Road, Brighton, BN2 1AP, England
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