From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Wed Feb 21 2007 - 09:18:59 EST
Jerry ------- I am not "proposing" to put a price on nature. I am saying that aspects of nature _are_ valued irrespective of what Smith, Marx, or I say about it. This _reality_ was something that Marx was acutely aware of: in his explanation of the distinction between value and wealth, in his recognition that objects can have an exchange-value and market price but not constitute value; in his writings on original accumulation, etc. > Attempts to apply valuations to nature are a projection of capitalist > social relations onto a domain on which they do not apply. Point is it happens. Because it happens it raises issues concerning the sum of prices in relation to the sum of values and the sum of value in relation to the sum of wealth. Paul C ------ One has to be very careful with notions like the sum of wealth, since this includes the imputed price of lots of things which may not correspond to values: imputed value of financial assets, of land ( from capitalised rents ) etc. The issue of being able to set total price equal to total value is at one level a trivial issue since they are equal up to a scalar coefficient, which can be said of any two quantities. It only becomes constraining if one wants to introduce a second equation total interest +profit+rent = total surplus value. But all the above are flow quantities, the things you are mentioning are stocks so they do not affect these flow quantities.
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