[OPE-L:3461] Re: measurement of value and shadow prices

[Paul Cockshott <wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 21:19 08/06/00 -0400, you wrote:



>   I think Marx just can't quite get himself (though he comes awfully close)
> to say that only with price measurement does the object acquire the
> property that is being measured.  Heisenberg seems to have tried to escape
> the paradoxes of quantum theory with a return to aspects of Aristotlean
> metaphysics (criticized by Lindley in End of Physics). I think Marx may be
> in the same trap.
>
> There is a really quite a bit to think through here, and this is just a
> preliminary reply which may not be coherent. If so, I apologize in advance.

I dont see that it is really necessary to make allusions to quantum effects
in discussing value. We are dealing with macroscopic phenomena, and any
uncertainty in measurement can be dealt with using classical probability
theory.

More generally though, the position that things only exist when being
measured is the standpoint of Machist/ positivist interpretations of the
sciences that developed at the turn of the 19th/20th century. If one is
sympathetic to such interpretations there may be a temptation to read
them back onto Marx, but this is surely an anachronistic exercise. In doing
so you put yourself at odds with the more orthodox interpretation of
Marxism as a variant of philosophical materialism, which, in the philosophy
of science has opposed the Machist/positivist position.