Date: Wed, 30 Jul 97 7:18:54 EDT
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Musician's create surplus value? Was: Info Revolution






		Rakesh,



	It seems to me that talking about "metaphysical" labor really reveals
how far the LTV argument is stretched.  After all, the entire argument hinges
on the assumption that labor produces real, tangible value.  



	Consider this:  All labor, in fact all current human activity,
plus the results of past labor that are currently accessible, plus the
bounty of nature equals the total *potential* for reproduction.  All human
activity, including labor, plus the results of all accidents as well as
positive, past human efforts which impinge on the present, plus all
accidents of nature, plus all human tastes and fancies, equals the total
*potential* for need. 



	Labor can create need as well as benefit.  If you order a steak
and I burn the steak, I've created the need for another steak.  Also,
there's no telling how good the steak will be.  If I accidently ruin the
steak, and you tell your friends, my restaurant may close, putting me and
everybody else in the place out of business.  If my restaurant is a
success and I parlay that success into a frozen dinner cooperative, then
decide to add a steak dinner to my line, not knowing that the beef
industry has accidentally fostered BSE, I may bankrupt the whole company
just because I decided to cook a whole lot of tasty steaks. 


	If the singer Jewel decided four years ago to pose for nude
pictures (there's a tricky one, is a nude model laboring, or simply
benefiting from the bounty of nature?) and Playboy gets hold of them and
decides to publish (copy) them who labored?  Did Jewel? Playboy? the
photographer who just happened to remember her face and look through his
archives?  If Jewel's albums now sell two million more copies to
adolescent boys who then develop a taste for female folk-rockers and
popularize 10 new acts, who labored and when did that labor develop a
defined value?  If, conversely, Jewel's career is destroyed and half a
million CD's are left on the shelves, did she do anti-labor?  If Jewel's
doctor concludes that her healthy physique and dreamy voice are the result
of her mother's application upon her as a baby of a native Alaskan herbal
unguent, creating huge demand for this health miracle, what was the value
of the native Alaskans' work before everybody discovered their brew?  Does
the fact that it now helps more people change its value?  What is the
value of the experimentation that developed the lotion?  What was it
before everyone knew about it?



	I could go on, but the point is clear: If you try to assign an
absolute value, or even a positive or negative value, to the product of
labor before it is consumed you are doomed to contradictions.  All you can
do is say that labor creates a potential, and make your best estimate at
what that potential might be.  The potential is not determined until the
labor-product is consumed.  While basic human needs certainly create
defined economic underpinnings, they can vary due to natural causes, and
under exploitative circumstances there is not even the assurance that
life-sustaining needs will be met (consider the Potato Famine). The LTV is
an attempt at a Newtonian construct in a chaotic, quantum-mechanical
world.  If physicists can accept their fate, then economists should be
able to do the same.





	peace








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