>Ajit: On what ground one can put the value of gold or silver equal to price
>of gold or silver? The condition for this happening is so restrictive that
>you don't even wanna think about it. I'm amazed how people in 1997 could go
>on making such restrictive assumption in the name of solving the
>transformation problem, when many have already shown that in the traditional
>framework, Marx's two invariant conditions can be fulfilled under much less
>restrictive conditions.
>________
Chai-on: You are right. I thus admitted Fred's position with a grain of
salt. Yet, his position is positive nevertheless in arguing that the input
values need not be re-transformed, which is mine.
>Ajit: A bad example. Temperature is necessarily a relative category, but
>Marx's value is an absolute category. I think you are wrong when you say
>'labor time is actually not measurable". In principle you can always measure
>the amount of labor-time that goes into producing a commodity. Moreover, if
>you admit that labor-time is not measurable, then the whole idea of
>translating the monetary value to labor-time is nothing but a sham. On what
>basis you could say that so much of gold or silver is equal to so much of
>labor-time, when you admit that it cannot be measured. On the other hand,
>one can also say that actually prices are not measurable; since same
>commodity has various prices. As i said in response to Andrew, his prices
>are abstract too because in general prices for a commodity when bought in
>bulk is lower than prices for the same commodity when bought in small
quantity.
>
Chai-on: temperature is relative in regard to the mercury height. With no
regard to the mercury, it is also absolute, intrinsic magnitude because the
temperature is existent even if the mercury is dispensed with. I could say
only in my theoretical discussion that so much of gold or silver is equal
to so much of labor-time, The labortime cannot be measured with my clock
since every concrete labor needs to be reduced to homogeneous labor in
advance, which is impossiblea posteriori. Even in the same concrete labor,
the socially averaged labor is varying with time and place. Yes, the market
prices are varying. We only know its average price on its trend, which
might not be correspond exactly with any actual price of it.
In solidarity,
Chai-on