From: Andrew Brown (Andrew@LUBS.LEEDS.AC.UK)
Date: Thu May 15 2003 - 10:51:23 EDT
Hi, A minor and dull point and then a major and interesting point: (1) You are invalidly mixing practical with theoretical notions of generality and simplicity. Of course, in practice, there is not a money commodity and even when there was we still only required any old unit of account. And, yes, no doubt exchange relations between bundles of commodities are interesting in practice. But in theory we gain nothing by starting off thinking about exchange relationships between vectors, and we do not even have to introduce money at all. This because the key conceptual issue is that of commensurability for which the practical considerations you make are, initially, irrelevant. This has nothing to do with barter. It has to do with focusing upon the most important (most abstract and simple) categories of capitalism before moving on to more concret and complex ones. (2) So, then, to the key point. You state: > The logic of the exchange process enforces the existence > of a conserved scalar field. I agree that labour values > act as an attractor to this field. I have never done the > experiments to see if "standard commodity content" for example > might also act as an attractor. > This is an interesting way of looking at it. You talk of a 'existence of a conserved scalar field'. I think this is a *pressupposition* that you have made. I think it needs justification. In fact I think it is senseless until we state what constitutes the 'field'. Indeed I am arguing that the only thing that can possibliy constitute it is abstract labour. Let be more precise: I do not think I would it is a 'field' at all; it is a substance. This takes us into the metaphysics of the (highly contested) notion of 'field', on which, I supsect, materialist dialectics has rather alot to say. (It also raises the notion of 'substance' of course) > What I am saying is that incomesurablity is not absolute. Measuring > with weight with an approximate kilo gives an answer that is not > identical with the use of the standard kilo in Paris, but what one is > concerned with is the error bounds. Mass is defined in terms of the > standard kilo, all other kilo weights are distinct and only > approximate it. Measurement theorists dont like this, but it is a > workable arrangement. > > A small change in the commodity bundle of the standard commodity is > analogous. Now, perhaps, you can see what I am getting at, and where we disagree? You are presuming, at least from my point of view, that *something* is being measured. You have called it a field. In your analogy it is mass. I am saying that we must first establish *what* is being measured. What is the equivalent of notion in economics to the notion of 'mass' in physics? We cannot just say 'it is a field', it is a 'something' and then get on with it. Until we have established what the thing is, economics, Sraffian or otherwise, remains entirely senseless, irrational, meaningless, without foundation, hocus pocus... Marx agonised over and then refuted Bailey's argument that no substance underlies exchange value at all. You seem to me to be somewhere between Bailey and Marx. On the one hand you say there is a 'third thing', with Marx. On the other, you simply call it a 'field', which I think simply begs the questions of what the 'third thing' is, and, without an answer to this question, ends up sliding back to Bailey's point of view. In any case, our ultimately very different respective versions of materialism are beginning to surface, in a very interesting way. Many thanks, Andy
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