> I would suggest that labor in historical formations previous
> to the epoch of commodity production fell generally outside
> of abstract labor.
Do you mean that labor in these formations was not transferable
between different productive tasks? (If you just mean that
labor in those contexts did not produce commodities, that is
unassailable by construction.)
> "Labor" does not have to be represented by exchange
> value--on this we agree.
Yes.
> But abstract labor as exchange itself value positing labor
> can only be represented in the use value of another
> commodity or money.
I'm sorry, I can't parse this -- unless it's saying "labor that
can only be represented in exchange value can only be
represented in exchange value". But that can't be what you're
saying.
> I'll have to study Marx's critique of Prodhoun and Darimon
> to get straight why he thought impossible the elimination of
> the representation of social labor time in money as long as
> capitalist relations of production held.
OK, but that's not what I was talking about at the end of my
posting -- I was talking about the representation of social
labor time in a planned, socialist economy.
Allin Cottrell.