Thanks Michael for your comment. Your wrote:
>> Just because Mike W is critical of it doesn't mean I cannot explore the
>> transhistorical argument.
>
>Right on, Jurriaan!
Apropos. To tell you the truth, having looked at it from many angles, I
still find the Marxian concept of productive labour quite confusing, and I
am reminded therein of freshman days when I studied the philosophical
problem of "free will and determinism" back in 1978. I walked into the
office of Dr David Novitz, my philosophy teacher at Canterbury University
(in New Zealand) at the time, and I said to him "I absolutely have to talk
to you about this problem, because I am very confused about it". Wherupon
he said to me, "well, that is great ! That means you are really thinking
about it. Many students in my opinion don't actually see that there is a
problem, or what the problem is." Well, we talked, and I didn't solve the
problem, and my eventual "compatibility thesis" did not earn me a very high
grade at all, but I recall feeling somewhat gratified by his comment and
motivated to study it further. Likewise, I feel heartened by Michael's
comment, even though I haven't satisfactorily solved the problem. Yet
between all of us we ought to be able to do that, surely ?
In solidarity
Jurriaan
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