Why is disagreement evidence of lack of understanding? Is the point so evident that anyone who understood it would agree? Is it necessary to go ad hominem? Did I say that your fundamentalist faith prevents your from grasping the simple, obvious, and fatal arguments with your cherished but preposterous beliefs? Let's avoid this personalization.
I know that value there is supposed to operate at the systemic level, and to show that there's exploitation at that level. And it does a tolerably decent job of modeling that. I have actually said that at least five times in this discussion. At least!
But you don't need value theory to make that point, the theoty embroiled in complications elsewhere, it has made no progress and shown no results in over 100 years. Adherence to it is now evidence (not conclusive) of crankery. It's time to disentangle what's good in Marx from the theory he inherited from classical political economy, and move on.
--- Shane Mage <shmage at pipeline.com> wrote:
> T Fast wrote:
> "...The point of the LTOV is to show how
> exploitation can be measured
> at the level of the system as a whole..."
>
> And this is the whole point, the point that Justin
> seems incapable
> of understanding. Measurement, the basis of all
> science, requires
> an objective unit of measure. For the political
> economy of
> Capitalism that unit of measure is the quantum of
> socially necessary
> labor time, what Marx called "value." Without such
> measurability
> "economics" has descended steadily to its present
> pitiful state.
>
> 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)
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