From: clyder@GN.APC.ORG
Date: Sun Oct 07 2007 - 11:26:54 EDT
> Just quickly, this definition of economic value as > the > currently average socially necessary labour time objectified in a product > is > not unproblematic, insofar as labour-services do not result in any > identifiable product. Can you give me examples of the sort of services you mean? >I am not sure how I could possibly prove that the > dispersion of exchange ratios around value ratios is small, and that as a > whole, it is a zero sum game. Well, one is limited by the available statistics, but this has now been done for many economies. > One question is whether you define the production of the gross output as > constituting the whole economy. I do not. Please explain this. >And with Marx, I think that > capital does not have to be lodged in productive assets in order to be > capital. Consequently, it is possible that a larger amount of capital > assets > can exist external to production, than inside it. With commodity money this is true, since value can exist in the form of gold stocks. I dont see how it can be true without commodity money. > > I had hoped that, confronted with half a million US home-owners > foreclosing > their mortgages, that American leftists would investigate the social > meaning > of all this - what are the specific causes for this, what are the > consequences for people's lives, and what opportunities does this create > for > an alternative politics etc. But they don't do this, instead they > reiterate > the boring refrain that the rate of profit is falling and that the > recession > is coming, blah blah. Well, every boom is followed by a bust, but that is > not an analysis that can orient anybody (well, I haven't read Michael > Perelman's new book yet). My response, here in Scotland, was to try to persuade the Solidarity party to have the cancellation of all debts as a key feature of its program. The Trots blocked this of course.
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