[OPE-L:26] [OPE-L:248] Re: Re: Re: Chapter 1

clyder@gn.apc.org
Thu, 29 Oct 1998 12:50:12 +0000

At 11:03 PM 28-10-98 -0500, you wrote:
>
>Brendan, Paul, Fred, and now Chris have all written posts asserting, in
>various ways, that equivalence relations satisfying (something like)
>reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity constitute a sort of equality
>relationship, thus seeming to refute Steve's and my claim that there is a
>qualitative distinction between equivalence and equality that invalidates
>Marx's argument in Ch.1 (or any similar argument).
>>2) Following Paul, alternative bundles Ax, By, and Cz may be deemed equal
>in terms of the metric of exchange value, measured perhaps in some common
>monetary unit. But the equality is *only* defined with respect to that
>metric, and no implication about equality with respect to measures in
>*other* dimensions (e.g., utility or socially necessary labor time) follows.
>
Of course it does not, it merely establishes that the logic of exchange
is compatible with a metric characteristic of a conservation law.
Given that the strongest scalar signal that the system is exposed
to is labour input, the system of prices tends to be captured
by this.
Paul Cockshott Dept Computer Science University of Glasgow
wpc@dcs.gla.ac.uk