File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802, message 463


Date: Thu, 26 Feb 98 16:16:56 EST
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: RE: Existence of Value







		C. Tony,



	First, there were those who believed in Newtonian mechanics and
the aether at the same time.  Only until relativity came along did it
become impossible to rely on the aether.  However, as you point out, I
extended my own metaphor a little far.  Therefore I will say that the LTV
is like the aether and leave Comrade Newton out of it. 


	Your example of the asteroid minerals presents the absurd
reduction that is inherent in the LTV.  If I want to spear a fish, and I
bend over to pick up a sharp stick, my bending over did not create the
sharpness of the stick.  I could have bent over and picked up a stick that
wasn't sharp.  My bending over is totally unrelated to stick sharpness. 
If I stopped to sharpen a stick, the fish might go away before I finish. 



	Labor is a fact of life. The usefulness of labor is the product of
chance.  The reason I brought Newton into the mix was that Newtonian
mechanics are deterministic. We live in a probabilistic world.  There is
no deterministic connection between labor and usefulness.  Labor may or
may not be useful.  The usefulness of labor has no connection to labor
time.



	The presumption of a connection between labor time and usefulness
of labor is not troubling when one considers a simplistic model of the
economy.  A complicated economy with producers who are many steps removed
from ultimate consumers, does not yield to the same simplistic analysis. 
In such an economy it becomes clearer that production may or may not
satisfy consumer demands.  Technology may become anachronistic before it
is developed. Technologies that were considered curiosities may become
tremendously useful. *Risk* is everywhere because we cannot know the
economic future.  The LTV suggest we can and it is wrong except for one
thing: we do know that the more people work the more they will demand to
be compensated.  We can also get some estimate of the usefulness of all
the goods in an economy.  However, these things cannot be known in
relation to each other.  They are like the momentum and position of a
particle.  You can know one and you can know the other, but not both in
the same moment, because their connection is broken by uncertainty. 






	peace





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