[lbo-talk] Delong puts the smackdown on ol' Whiskers

[Shane Mage]

Justin wrote:
>
>....In CI, the thing Marx is most interesting in
>explaining and clarifying is the source of profits is
>everything, including labor, trades at value,
>understood as SNALT (sociallly necessary abstract
>labor time, multiples of unskilled labor necesasry to
>produce the typical commodity or total set of
commodities)....

This is just completely, ludicrously, wrong.  Marx never speaks
of "socially necessary *abstract* labor time"--he always speaks
of "socially necessary labor time."  And the unit of measure is
very explicitly "average"--"*durschnittsgrad*"--labor time.  It is
never *unskilled*--*unerkundig* or *ungelernt*--labor time.

Shane Mage

"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all 
things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even 
downright silly.

When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all 
things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true."  (N. 
Weiner)