> Sorry for the late reply, but I'm only now going through the posts to this
> group.
>
> The trouble with discussions about value theory, in my experience, is that
> they try to take in too much too fast. Let's keep things simple and start
> with the very thing you name, namely price. What is it? An equation of a
> commodity with money.
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Ok, so, either a comodity is equatable with it's price or there is something about the commodity that exceeds the price. Problems of induction and *definition* enter here.
> These days we're used to treating money as a conventional symbol, but Marx
> viewed it as another commodity which had, over the course of time, come to
> express the value of others. But the realtion contained in price is
> expressed in its most basic form when I say that a given quantity of
> commodity x "is worth" a given quantity of commodity y. I am, in other
> words, establishing a quantitative relation between two commodities. But of
> what are they quantities? When I say a pencil is longer that a pen I refer
> to quantities of length, a property they both share. There are no such
> things as quantities of utility. Utility pertains to quality. Different
> commodities satisfy different needs and are therefore incommensurable. So
> value can be said to be that of which different commodities, equated to one
> another through money or price, are quantities. Quantities of what? Thereby
> hangs the theory. But first we must understand the question the theory was
> designed to answer.
> ___! _______________________________
> o
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Ok, so commodification is a self-referential circuit: there is and isn't an 'outside' to prices. The incommensurable must be made commensurable, but is not reducible to the latter. But if that dynamic is historicized, then the issue/problem of the invariable measure of value is a chimera of our own making, relative to our ability to mathematize that which exceeds mathematization; to borrow from the pragmatists, the problem of qualia as applied to political economy.
To what do terms like quality or utility refer? And how do we avoid circularity in our analyses and definitions? Methinks we're on the cusp of issues Nietzsche was dealing with in somewhat similar [yet different!] contexts...............
Robert Pirsig call your office..........
Ian