From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Wed Jun 13 2007 - 04:52:46 EDT
Yes that is it:" Total concrete labor necessarily equals total abstract labor." This is part of the information destroying properties of the operation of addition - you start out with lots of information - hours worked in milling, hours worked in oil refining, hours worked in shoemaking etc, and end up with a single number - just hours worked. Information destruction and abstraction are closely related. They both irreversible logical operations. -----Original Message----- From: OPE-L [mailto:OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU] On Behalf Of Howard Engelskirchen Sent: 12 June 2007 22:10 To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Complex ... and the French edition of capital By adding up the hours of work done, you'd be abstacting from other human activities, etc., but you would not be abstracting from the activity of labor. You would be counting hours of concrete labor. Still, I agree with your proposition because the totality of concrete labor is all there is to constitute abstract labor. Total concrete labor necessarily equals total abstract labor. Howard ----- Original Message ----- From: "Paul Cockshott" <wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK> To: <OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU> Sent: Tuesday, June 12, 2007 4:12 PM Subject: Re: [OPE-L] Complex ... and the French edition of capital Michael ------- You could do that, but then you would be ignoring abstraction altogether. On Tue, Jun 12, 2007 at 12:05:04AM +0100, Paul Cockshott wrote: > Michael P > > What I meant was that it is hopeless to think that anyone could > quantify the amount of abstract labor in an economy. > ------------ > Paul C > > Why not just add up the number of people who work then multiply by > the fraction of the year that they each work? > On the contrary I would be using abstraction, since I would by adding up all the hours of work done, be abstracting from the concrete form in which the work was done, and counting it only as human labour in general --- in the abstract. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu michaelperelman.wordpress.com
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