Re: [OPE] peanut butter value-form theory

Jerry:
> Now put one orange in each hand. In your left hand there is an orange that
> fell
> from a tree and hit you in the head on public lands and in your right
> hand there is an orange produced as a commodity by a capitalist firm which
> you purchased with money. Not so easy to tell them apart if one is only
> looking at their material form, is not? What is the "physical difference"
> between the two oranges?

Orange trees in public lands are usually watered and tended by people, so
their fruit contains human labor too. You need to compare an orange that has
not been cultivated with one that has.

> So, the means of production which are purchased by "service capitalists"
> are, from your perspective, merely a "collection of use-values"? Don't
> these
> "use-values" (the means of production employed by service capitalists)
> also have an exchange value?

Obviously I would not call them means of production, but, yes, they do have
an exchange value. My point is that service capitalists are final buyers of
these objects, therefore they exchange for the purposes of obtaining their
use-values - just like you do when you buy oranges. Service capitalists do
not have the same relationship to those objects as does the industrial
capitalist who sells them in order to realize their value.

Alejandro:
>>The craftsmanship to produce Ferrari is scarcer than the craftsmanship to
>>produce Ford. Note that scarcity is a phenomenon that emerges from the
>>combination of demand and availability of resources.<<

This is why, in addition to the distinction between price and value (a
distinction more easily understood in our post-bubble times) you need the
ceteris paribus method. Suppose demand, craftmanship, etc, are the same, but
the amount of necessary labor time varies - don't you think the value will
also change?

Paula

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Received on Wed Apr 8 18:02:14 2009