> On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Lakshmi Rhone <lakshmirhone at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> >
> > Then what is the relation between value and price? I thought that all the
> > available evidence
> > suggests that the connection is in fact robust. It seems to me that you
> are
> > retreating to a world
> > of scholastic distinctions though the theory is meant to give us a
> purchase
> > on the real world dynamics of capitalism.
> >
>
> If you don't want to read Marx or listen to Harvey in order to understand
> Marx then just say so.
I really don’t understand why you started talking about rent when we were first trying to figure out what value is and its relation to price.
I am not sure what Marx or you are saying. But from my surrealist social justice perspective I consider it rather astonishing that a natural substance mined in horrendous conditions by degraded and abused workers actually ascended to the heavens of the marketplace to become the God with which everything else had to request humbly an exchange. So I would juxtapose this image with this verse to show absurdity of bourgeois life, the voracious exploitation of those who brought to the market a thing of infinite power, the sacrifice of life and the enthroning of a thing.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3526/4079402424_4c3d5a2c37.jpg
Shakespeare in *Timon of Athens:*
“Gold? Yellow, glittering, precious gold? No, Gods, I am no idle votarist! ... Thus much of this will make black white, foul fair, Wrong right, base noble, old young, coward valiant. ... Why, this Will lug your priests and servants from your sides, Pluck stout men’s pillows from below their heads: This yellow slave Will knit and break religions, bless the accursed; Make the hoar leprosy adored, place thieves And give them title, knee and approbation With senators on the bench: This is it That makes the wappen’d widow wed again; She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices To the April day again. Come, damned earth, Thou common whore of mankind, that put’st odds Among the rout of nations.”
But this of course has little to do with Marx as we are not talking about the labor theory of value but the fetishism of gold as money, and it has little relevance to today as money is no longer gold, or anchored in gold.
LR
