From: Philip Dunn (pscumnud@dircon.co.uk)
Date: Sun Mar 09 2003 - 20:38:45 EST
gerald_a_levy <gerald_a_levy@msn.com> said: > >From [8557]: > > > In the mid eighties I > > happened to read Farjoun and Machover's book 'Laws of Chaos'. I have > > been hooked on the probabilistic approach to the theory of value and > > exploitation ever since. Another early influence was Scot Meikle's > > Aristotelian Marxism. Studying Aristotle took up the late 80s and early > > 90s. I spent the latter part of the 90s pleasantly marooned in the second > > millennium BCE courtesy of Martin Bernal. > > Hi Phil. > This is an unusual intellectual odyssey. What, if any, connections do you > see between a probabilistic approach to value theory and Aristotelian > thought? Having emerged from years of studying Aristotle and Greek > philosophy, how did your perspective on value change and/or deepen? > > Also, what works by Martin Bernal (not to be confused with J.D. > Bernal -- although, I wonder if they were related?) are especially worth > studying? > Hi Jerry Yes, they are father and son. It was mainly Black Athena II I was interested in. It pieces together a fascinating picture of the eastern Mediterranean in the second millennium BCE. Black Athena I is worth studying for its account of how a new paradigm, the Aryan Model of Ancient Greek history, (with little evidence in its favour) can overthrow a long held one such as the Ancient Model of Egyptian and Phoenician colonisation. I have not come across any precursor of probability theory in Aristotle. He does discuss 'luck and the automatic/spontaneous' in Physics, Book II, ch 4-6. But there is no mention of games of chance or anything like that. In Farjoun and Machover value and price are related probabilistically. It would be a bad mistake, however, to see value as essence and price as accident. Aristotle would not countenance the idea of quantity as essence (but ratio would be OK). I now think that the magnitude of a commodity's intrinsic value is an accidental property of the commodity. The link with probability is in terms of Aristotle's notion of a power (dynamis) and its activity (energeia) and the result or realisation or recognition (entelecheia) of this activity. Briefly, the value creating activity of labour-power is recognised/measured both in the labour market as money wages and in the product market via prices. These two measurements are related probabilistically. What I wanted to get from Aristotle was an understanding of the Aristotelian terminology that Marx uses: form/matter, essence/accident, genus/species/individual, potential/actual. Phil
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Mar 11 2003 - 00:00:00 EST