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

Lakshmi Rhone lakshmirhone at gmail.com
Sun Feb 14 20:45:01 PST 2010


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



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