From: Paul Cockshott (wpc@DCS.GLA.AC.UK)
Date: Tue Feb 01 2005 - 05:59:20 EST
Hi Paul C: Aren't you implicitly assuming that SNLT in 1860 Germany equals SNLT in Japan in the 1990s? ------------------ Distinguish two things here - necessity of labour with respect to the market on which a commodity is sold - and expenditure of labour as a fraction of the workers life. The SNLT criterion applies to comparing two different contemporaneous labours, one efficient one less so. But the labour theory of value also allows one to compare products to peoples real lives. It gives a basis to evaluate objectively economic progress. If a kilo of rice in China today involves less necessary labour than it did 100 years ago, that is an objective advancement in productivity. ------------ Aren't you also implicitly assuming that the intensity of labor hasn't changed temporally and spatially? ================ To a first approximation yes, you are clearly right that one might later attempt to compensate for this. > 2. changes in the value of specific commodities across space and time - > a kilo of rice for example How does the change in the value of _one_ commodity (in this case, rice) allow us to determine the commensurability of _all_ commodities? -------------------- Issue is not commensurability of commodities per se, but the comparison of commodities to the expenditure of human lifetimes. ------------------------ > 3. changes in the rate of surplus value across space and time See my questions under 1. ------------------ Since rate of surplus value is a dimensionless ratio, I don't see that those issue above apply
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