From: Christopher Arthur (arthurcj@WAITROSE.COM)
Date: Wed Apr 13 2005 - 18:06:33 EDT
Andy and all Yes I do disagree with you a lot. > > >Well, mine ends up recognising labour time as the fundamental unit of cost >in any society. And it recognises the product as an embodiment of labour >in any society. > To begin with I disagree here, both in secific and because I dispute any approach to value theory starting from what is present in any society. You are simply wrong about this 'cost'. Peasants have a saying 'Time costs nothing'. Only capital is interested in time becausde the form of the circuit of accumulation requires measure in a rate over time. Intuitively one might think all socieiites worry about effort but that is not the same as time because it would include intensity and unpleasantness etc. etc. But in any case as Marx said, for UV questions using up resources is also a cost. > > > >Then the inversion of capitalism turns embodied labour into >congealed abstract labour and it is obvious that SNLT is its measure. >This often tends to be denied in systematic dialectics despite, for >example, Chris s excellent Dialectics of Labour from which I draw >quite a lot (e.g. labour as concrete universal). Oops - wrong reference: that it title of my book on alienation. correct reference is Dialectics and Labour >Am much closer to Chris than others on these matters perhaps my differences with Chris stem more from other aspects such as the basics of materialist dialectics whereby exchange value is clear evidence of a power and hence *must* have a material grounding. >Andy > You are only formally close to me in that we both retain determination by SNLT but for yu this comes apriori out of your ahistorical point above, for me it comes from the form of capital and the form of the capital relation. As you rightly say I reject the inference from your materialist dialectic abour real powers. Precisely because of the inversion of abstract and concrete it is possible to have empty forms. I have never understood how you deal with 'honour and conscience' - is the sale of these evidence of a material power? Generally I think it is impermissable for LTV simply to note that 'other things' have a price form. This is precisely what must be explained, and I explian it and then ask under what circumstances might it be right to argue some of these prices have material grounds. chris A 17 Bristol Road, Brighton, BN2 1AP, England
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