From: Andrew Brown (Andrew@LUBS.LEEDS.AC.UK)
Date: Wed May 21 2003 - 05:09:55 EDT
Hello Ian, Thanks for your question. > My question > for Andy is: do you remain dissatisfied because you think that the > ontological status of social labour remains unclear or undefined in > Paul's presentation? If so, and assuming that for you its ontological > status is in fact clear, would you measure abstract labour in a > different manner to Paul? In other words, do these philosophical > differences result in practical differences? I actually do not understand Paul's exposition, I cannot attribute any meaning to crucial aspects of it. There are no doubt many reasons for this. One I haven't mentioned previously is our respective philosophies of maths and in particular number. Paul mentioned that something (I forget what) is 'purely quantitative'. I don't think anything is or could be purely quantitative! But these are massive issues and we can hardly resolve them in an email exchange (which is what I was getting at in my previous post). However, I would be delighted if, in fact, the problem is purely expositional and if therefore Paul (or indeed yourself) could phrase his argument in such a way as I could make sense of. Practical differences? Well I am largely supportive of Ben Fine's concrete research program, and corresponding interpretation of Capital (an interpretation to which a specific interpretation of the OCC/VCC/TCC distinctions is crucial). This is significantly different from Paul's approach I think. Another important area of difference would be the question of socialism, I doubt that I agree with Paul's take on this and suspect a facet of our disagreemnet would stem from our differing approaches to value (not that I have ever looked at this in any detail). Regarding your summary of my position on value: this is a reasonable summary -- and thanks for that -- though it does of course beg crucial questions such as the nature of 'logic' and its relation to matter, so I probably wouldn't have put it quite the same way. Many thanks, Andy
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