On Nov 4, 2010, at 8:24 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> "Orthodoxy"...Postone, if I recall correctly, never uses the term,
> but rather
> calls the interpretation of Marx which he rejects as "traditional,"
> and
> (roughly) defines traditional Marxism as assuming that "Labor" is a
> transhistorical entity, while value-theorists from Rubin on have
> increasingly focused on "labor" as a capitalist category, which
> does not
> exist in any non-capitalist society...
There is no "asssuming" about it. Marx is totally definite on the matter:
"...even if there were no chapter on value in my book, the analysis
of the real relationships which I give would contain the proof and
demonstration of the real value-relation...the mass of products
corresponding to the different needs requires different and
quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society.
That this necessity of distributing social labor in definite proportions
cannot be done away with by the particular form of social production,
but can only change the form it assumes, is self-evident. No natural
laws can be done away with. What can change, in changing historical
circumstances, is the form in which these laws operate. And the form
in which this proportional division of labor operates, in a state of
society where the interconnection of social labor is manifested in the
private exchange of the individual products of labor, is precisely the
exchange-value of these products. The science consists precisely in
working out how the law of value operates." (Letter to Dr. Kugelmann)
Shane Mage
"All things are an equal exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods are for gold and gold for goods."
Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr, 90