From: Fred Moseley (fmoseley@MTHOLYOKE.EDU)
Date: Thu Jul 12 2007 - 21:53:47 EDT
Quoting Paul Cockshott <wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK>: > > I think he is right to argue that it is this structure that allows > the existence of money as a dimension reduction device. The assertion > that the common scalar is labour, is only an assertion, it is not > proved in the argument. There are obviously other possible common > scalars - weight, volume, carbon content etc, but none of these had > the same immediate empirical plausibility as labour. > > I would argue that the logic of commodity exchange implies a common > conserved scalar value, and that hypothetically systems of commodity > exchange could exist in which something other than labour provided > this conserved scalar, ( some system of robot production for instance > ), but that in contemporary human society it actually is labour that > is the underlying scalar. But this is something to be empirically > tested, not something to be logically deduced. Hi Paul, I agree with what I understand to be the general thrust of your argument - Marx makes a strong argument for the plausibility of labor as the common property of commodities that determines their exchange values, but a logical proof of this hypothesis is not possible. The ultimate test of this hypothesis is its empirical explanatory power. And on this ground, I think that labor as the common property has much more explanatory power than any other possible hypothesis. Starting with the necessity of money and the value of money in SEction 3 of Chapter 1. What is the difference between equality and equivalence? Does equivalence require commensurability? Commensurability is the crucial point in Marx's argument. Comradely, Fred ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
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