[OPE-L:3491] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: measurement of value

[Paul Cockshott <wpc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 18:05 12/06/00 +0530, you wrote:


> Paul Cockshott wrote:
>
> > At 11:25 11/06/00 -0400, you wrote:
> > >
> > >So this delimitation of the category of commodity, which I agree that Marx
> > >accepts upon initial analysis, does not answer the specific question. I am
> > >saying that if we don't pinpoint successful market exchange as the point
> > >that goods acquire value, then not only would we have to consider
> > >inventories as already having acquired value but also (and why not?)
> > >production that is not even intended to be sold on the market (say the
> govt
> > >using tax money to hire workers in a transportation dept to build
> > >roads--have these roads too acquired value?)
> >
> > Yes, but they only aquire exchange value if the government sells them off.
>
> __________________
>
> Right now I don't have time to respond to Rakesh, which seems to me as never
> ending debate. In anycase, just a small comment here paul. Strictly
> speaking the
> road should not acquire value because it is not *reproducible*.

To the extent that the road occupies land, that land is not reproducible. But
one could readily adjust for that by defining the road as 'a road from town a
to town b'. Since additional roads can be built, and if we rule out unusual
cases
such as the only possible road over a mountain pass, there will be a fairly
well defined amount of labour required to build a road, or a second or third
road from a to b.

However the substance of his point did not concern the particularities of
roads but the fact that the road was build by the government.
The UK government used to build a substantial percentage of its armaments
directly, from rifles to battleships. The fact that HMS Dreadnought was build
in a government dockyard whereas its sister ships were build in private
shipyards does not devalue the former.


> Rakesh is simply
> wrong when he says that goods acquire value at the point of exchange in the
> market. Many things exchange in the market, most notable of them would be
> land,
> that have no value because they are not reproducible. Cheers, ajit sinha
>
> >