From: Paul Cockshott (clyder@GN.APC.ORG)
Date: Tue Aug 14 2007 - 16:28:01 EDT
I now see what you are saying. This interpretation helps us to understand why the standard definition > of labour-value: > - (i) correctly does not reduce worker consumption to its labour-cost, but > - (ii) incorrectly does not reduce capitalist consumption to its > labour-cost. I would not have put point (i) the way you do, surely you should say 'correctly does not reduce the labour input to the labour necessary to reproduce that labour input' On the second point I am unconvinced for the reasons I put forward in our discussion on it a year or so ago. Quoting Ian Wright <wrighti@ACM.ORG>: > > Surely all you have to do is say that for now we are taking X to be a > primitive > > input when computing the X content of all other goods, whether X is labour > > or oil. It does not imply that workers do not consume a real wage or that > > real resources are not used to produce oil. > > Agreed. The irreducibility of the chosen real-cost basis, such as > labour, does not imply that workers are not currently consuming the > real wage or that real resources are not used-up to reproduce workers. > > But when we interpret the series expansion of standard labour-values > as denoting a dated process of replacement, in which each term of the > series occurs further and further into the past, then irreducibility > implies that workers are not consuming the real wage during this > "hypothetical process of replacement". This is how irreducibility > manifests under this interpretation. > > This interpretation helps us to understand why the standard definition > of labour-value: > - (i) correctly does not reduce worker consumption to its labour-cost, but > - (ii) incorrectly does not reduce capitalist consumption to its > labour-cost. > > (i) is a necessary property of any well-formed definition of > labour-value due to irreducibility. Both standard and nonstandard > labour-values share this property. But (ii) is not a necessary > property. It is equivalent to not reducing the commodity money-capital > to its labour-cost. But the reduction can be done, which yields > nonstandard labour-values. > Paul Cockshott www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~wpc reality.gn.apc.org ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
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