From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Tue Jun 27 2006 - 16:13:24 EDT
Thomas Sekine has this comment: "By now I have said quite enough to be able to conclude that we cannot observe the slightest sign of the working of the law of value in the contemporary economy". quoted from: Thomas T. Sekine, "Marxian theory of value, what we might learn from it", in: Korean Journal of Political Economy (Seoul), Volume 2, 2004, loc. p. 33. His supporting argument includes the five main items that: - "social scientific knowledge distinguishes itself by virtue of the fact that it is not predictive, and hence it does not lend itself to any technical application... [and] it explains the reason why reality has evolved as it has ex post facto" (p. 25) - "we now find ourselves in the process of ex-capitalist transition, i.e. in a process of disintegration of capitalism" (p. 26) - "the wage-rate has in effect become an administered or controlled price" (p. 27) - "the prices of commodities are determined arbitrarily, that is to say, strategically on the supply side" (ibid.) - "Beware of the loud street hawkers flaunting the Marxian theory of value as a crystal ball in which to see the world as they want you to see it" (p. 34) It all makes riveting reading.... It occurs to me that if social science has no predictive power (sic.), planned economy of almost any sort (including within capitalism) is impossible... thus Sekine seems to place us in the position of the Aymara indians in the mountains of the Andes, who visualise the past in front of them and the future behind their backs. In the Aymara language, the word "nayra" means both "eye, forehead or sight" as well as "the past", while the word "qhipa" means both "back or backside" as well as "the future". Jurriaan
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