Michael (nice name that) P. writes:
A good number of our posts suggest that we can deduce an
algebraic formula for values. I consider that approach to lead us to a dead
end.
Michael W.:
Quite! And why might this be? Perhaps, said the foxy old Hegelian, because the
value-form is that which (tendentially) captures all e-VALU-ation in the
bourgeois epoch. We can still (just) grasp what Shakespeare was getting at when
having Falstaff discuss the possibilites of putting a price on 'honour', and we
can still laugh at Wilde's quip about knowing the price of everything and the
value of nothing; but for how long will these distinctions keep their meaning?
Bourgeois society increasingly stamps its good-houskeeping seal of approval on
human activity only in the form of the price that its commodity can
systematically command in the market. The onward march of commodification leaves
fewer and fewer things which it is not acceptable to value in terms of
trade-offs. But still the basis of these trade-offs is (inter)-subjective -
albeit by subjects tendentially homogenized by the sanctions and incentives of
bourgeois social structure.
Comradely greetings,
Michael W.