Lakshmi Rhone wrote:
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> At any rate, on the labor theory of value thing,
Try it this way (from Moishe Postone). Marx wrote a critique of political economy, looking _back_ on capitalism from a hypothetical future (socialism); but he did NOT produce a critical political economy. In other words, there is no such thing as Marxianeconomics: economics is by its natgure vulgar economy, not a science. The theory of value, then, is _not_ an economic theory, and cannot be used to calculate prices. Rather it is a way of 'catching' the peculiar nature of human relations in a capitalist economy: The Meaning of the labor of Pierre in Paris is determined NOT by his product but by the labor of Marieain Buenos Aires and by the labor of ravi in India. None of these labors have any meaning in themselves but, which is discovdrable only when the products are exchanged on the market. Their labor is abstract, an aliquot part of the entire labor of the world. The theory of value then is a historical or cultural theory which expalins the meaningless ness of work in capitalism.
Capitalism, then, is _in tendency_ a totality, which is not true of human history as a whole or of any other form of society. That is the feature of capitalism which defines it as history.
This is merely my first try of articulating a perspective I've been arriving at for a few years & is probably not correct. But one part of it is certain: tghere can be no such thing as economic science, Marxian or otherwise. I also tend to think that of all human social orders, only capitalism is dialectical, and it is only dialectical _in tendency_, because capitalism exists in a human context much larege than capitalism itself. For example, when at home eating you say, "Please pass the sale," that is a non-commodty relationship, and though the table, the sdalt, and your dentures were at one time commodities they are no longer but rather use values, outside the realm of capitalism.
Carrol