Re: (OPE-L) Marx on The Clock

From: Paul C (clyder@GN.APC.ORG)
Date: Wed Jun 02 2004 - 17:21:45 EDT


Gerald A. Levy wrote:

>Hi Howard.
>
>
>
>> I'm more concerned with knowing what a clock
>>is.  We seem to use this result or that result to refer to the passage of
>>time, some of which we call clocks, or primitive clocks.   Clocks seem to
>>be  a time embodying mechanism, don't they -- the release of the
>>spring tells us a quantity of time has passed.  What about grains of gold?
>>Not passing > through an hourglass, but just their weight?  Why can't I
>>use them to tell > time?
>>
>>
>
>You might be interested in the following passage:
>
>"The  *clock* is based on the craftsmanship of artinsal production together
>with the erudition which characterises the dawn of bourgeois society.
>It gives the idea of the automatic mechanism and of automatic motion
>applied to production.  The history of the clock goes hand in hand with
>the history of the theory of uniform motion.  What, without the clock,
>would be a period in which the value of the commodity, and therefore
>the labour time necessary for its production, are the decisive factor?"
>(Marx/Engels, _Collected Works_, Volume 33, p. 403, emphasis in
>original).
>
>
 Another reason Aristotle could not have a clear idea of value. Clocks
did not exist.


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