Michael Dawson wrote:
>>how we can look at the process of production and deduce from that process
>>the numerical architecture of accumulation.
>>
>>
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>Why is "deducing the architecture of accumulation" on anybody's agenda?
>This isn't a calculus equation. It's a world where people live under
>conditions inherited from the past. Central among these conditions is the
>existence of a money-wielding elite out to perpetuate its established powers
>and privileges by perpetuating "private" industry.
>
>Within these conditions, the labor theory of value is a category that is
>useful for keeping track of who puts how much labor into commodities, and
>who gets the financial and political proceeds attaching to their production.
>It is useful because it grounds a socialist ethics in the actual, concrete
>events that are most central to the ethical and practical topic at hand.
>
>Money counts several things, but central, if not primary, among these is
>numbers of hours of work. A car costs 20,000 times what a hamburger costs
>because it takes 20,000 times more labor to make a car than it does to make
>a hamburger. That's not the whole story, but it's certainly not NONE of the
>story either.
>
>We have a composite theoretical approach to the human psyche and probably
>all other complex phenomena. Why can't we have one about economic counting?
>Doesn't reality dictate this? And isn't the labor theory of value one
>necessary theory there?
>
>Meanwhile, Sweezy and Veblen provide an excellent framework for
>understanding the political economy of capitalism. This understanding
>allows us to make some powerful predictions about the future of human
>events. The relative growth of finance; the importance of military
>spending; the progressive commercialization of personal life; the main
>trends in the division of labor; the stonewalling of the welfare state and
>public industry/employment.
>
>It's fine and dandy to "go beyond" them, but it had better lead to superior
>explanations and predictions of events. In my book, I see no need for
>wholesale rethinking. Their model, like all models, needs refinement and
>elaboration. But it has proven to be extremely robust as an interpretive
>and predictive framework.
>
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