[lbo-talk] The zen of marx (was clarification)

[Lakshmi Rhone]

I think I am getting this Alan.  Marxian contradictions are NOT like polar
opposites that are inseparable such as sides of a coin. And two sides of a
coin are not like money and commodities, because you can't flip money and
commodities like you can a flip a coin. Commodities always stay commodities,
and money always stays money. You could however turn a coin over. But then
you are saying that the Marxian contradiction is frozen and the coin flip is
contingent as shown in No Country for Old Men. But that makes Marx sound as
if he's not open to the contingencies of history. Something I have always
feared.
At any rate, on the labor theory of value thing, I still don't get it. While
I do value goods on the market by guessing at their relative labor content,
I know that their price does not depend on that alone; for example, a good
bottle of wine will cost me more than another with the same labor content if
it has taken more time to age. I know that the way in which I value goods in
terms of what I am going to pay for them does not depend very much on the
units of satisfaction I think I'll receive from them--I would not be a sharp
bargainer if I consulted my personal utile calculator if it could even count
up such a thing. Economics seems like it is based on a crazy ideas about the
psychology that people bring to the markets, but the labor theory of
valuation has a lot of problems.
Oh give up philosophy and economics, let's go for social justice.
LR