Re: Marx's Value Theory--a potential critique

[boddhisatva <kbevans@xxxxxxxxx>]

                Karl,



        You wrote:

" end. For it is a very short road from
overcoming the theory of value to bashing the modern proletariat, i.e. to be
at verbal *war* with the working class."



        I really don't know how you can say this.  Nothing that I have said
attacks the working class in any way.  I have said repeatedly that the
proletariat is expropriated and oppressed at every turn.  I was simply
protesting a *portion* of Marx's theory that has been drawn out a little far.
The proletariat is entitled, by natural law as far as I'm concerned, to the
full value (exchange, use, or labor) of the goods they produce.  They should
own the goods they produce for market and the capital they produce it with
just as surely as they have the right to that which they make for themselves
with their own hands.



        The only problem with labor-value theory is when people go so far out
of their way to prove it that they waste time, and ignore more important
subjects.   Labor-value is not the cornerstone it was in Marx's day.
Treating it as a tool for comprehension, rather than an actual phenomenon
does not bring the walls of Marxism tumbling down.  It still has value as an
analytic concept, but not as some totem representing the objective truth of
Marxism.





        peace





     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---