From: Jerry Levy (Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM)
Date: Mon Oct 10 2005 - 09:26:07 EDT
> Of course, tongue in cheek aside, your examples clearly > fail as examples of commodities in Sraffa's system, since they are > not use-values and have no price Hi Ian H: Neither virus has exchange value (although, one can easily posit a situation in which viruses as weapons are produced in order to be sold on the market and in which they are fully commodities and hence have exchange-value): that's why I referred to them as products. You don't think they have use-value. Why not? See below for my previous description of the usefulness of computer viruses. The usefulness of viruses as biological weapons is similar to the use-value of commodities produced as weapons: their capacity to be used to kill other living beings -- in this case, human beings. Without such a 'use-value' governments and others would not expend living labour and means of production on their creation. In solidarity, Jerry > >The 'usefulness' of the computer virus is its ability to diminish > >or destroy the use-value (and hence also the value and > >exchange-value) of computers.
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