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 --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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