Michael,
Here are a few comments on your recent post (OPE-1376).
Michael says:
Alan asked yesterday, "where does the value go?" If value were a physical
entity, we might have a law of the conservation of value. I read value
as a social relation. If someone stops loving a person, a fixed quantum of
love does not have to transferred to another.
John says:
To a certain extent, value takes the form of a physical entity. Hence,
Alan might well have asked, "Where has all the money gone?"
I think we agree that value is, indeed, a social relation. But given
that social relations in capitalism take the form of relations between
things, the disappearance of value has to be explained both in terms
of substance and form.
Michael says:
The only "quantitative" relations concerning value which Marx uses that
have
any consequence concern the general trend for dead labor to substitute for
living labor.
John says:
How about the trend for dead labor to substitute for previous dead labor?
That is, you're right, in Marx, dead labor is substituted for living
labor. Machines replace living labor. But machines also replace
machines.
John