Re: [OPE-L] Ricardo and Marx on embodiment

From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Thu Oct 06 2005 - 12:20:26 EDT


At 4:55 PM +0100 10/6/05, Andrew Brown wrote:
>Hi Rakesh,
>
>You write as if embodiment and congealment are the same thing.
>
>["If this is true, value cannot be the labor actually expended or
>embodied or congealed in the production of the commodity."]
>
>I can see what you are getting at but I'd want to say that if you follow
>through the logic that the labour is 'congealed' (rather than embodied)
>then this same logic tells us that this is 'purely social labour' (all
>individuality has been abstracted from along with all natural
>materiality) and hence we can anticipate that it isn't fixed
>individually but socially and changes accordingly. To the extent that it
>is congealed, it is social, it is a *peculiar* social substance, unlike
>natural substances in respect of its being changed socially (amongst
>other things).

I shall backtrack and study your distinction between embodiment and
congealment.  While I have been conflating them, I don't think the
point I am making perhaps in philosophically flat language however is
that far from yours. Or Marx's

rb

>Andy


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