[OPE-L:3506] Re: measurement of value

[bhandari@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Rakesh Bhandari)]

>What I object you is your slide towards instrumentalist subjectivism with
>the suggestion that unless values are represented as prices they do not exist.
>Paul Cockshott    (clyder@xxxxxxxxxx)

Instrumental subjectivism? Well how much mind is there in the universe...At
any rate, I understand value in neither subjective nor objective terms
(that is as independent description of the thing being measured) but rather
in irreducibly systemic terms--the thing being measured and the measurement
being made.

But aside from instrumental subjectivism, what about the dangers of 19th
century materialism? We have been led to believe that whenever we hear the
word 'shape' or 'form' pronounced, that it must be the shape or form of
*something*, that a material substratum is reqired to take on a shape
(Schroediger, Science and Humanism). Marx's ulitmate inability to
understand credit money as PURE FORM (mysterious though it is) could then
go back to his acceptance of Aristotle's causa materialis and causa
formalis. Of course Schroediger was forced to dispense with Aristotlean
habits in demonstrating how quantum mechanics had undermined 19th century
materialism. "But when you come to the ultimate particles constituting
matter, there seems to be no point in thinking of them agains as consisting
of some material. they are, as it were, *pure shape*, nothing but shape..."
>From the section "Form, Not Substance, The Fundamental Concept" in Science
and Humanism.

Yours, Rakesh