At 13:56 18/05/96 -0700, Michael Williams wrote:
It was eerie to see Paul & Allin (in
>the above mentioned note) couching the 'law of value' in terms of the
>CONSERVATION of the value substance in exchange. This seems to exactly parallel
>the conservation of their value substance in exchange which Mirowski (1989)
>'More Heat than Light: ... ')** argues underlies neoclassical economics, and
>which, he claims, the founding fathers of the marginalist revolution adopted
>uncritically from 19th century physics. That is, it manifest the kind of rather
>uncritical naturalistic aspirations which seem to inform Paul's methodological
>views - do they, Paul?
>
>[*I am relying on a draft of this paper dated June 1995 - I haven't yet seen
>the published version.]
>
I suspect that you may have seen an abreviated version of the paper that
we originally wrote. We are quite conscious of Mirowski, and in the full
version of the paper ( which was circulated as 'Values Law Values Metric'
to the value working group run by Alan)
we explain our relation to his views with a specific critique of his
differentiation between a 'field' and 'substance' formulation of value
theory in Marx. What he calles a 'field theory', is what OPE participants
call a simultaneous derivation of value, with the substance theory
being an embodied labour theory.
Paul Cockshott (wpc@cs.strath.ac.uk)