[OPE-L:5658] Re: Re: Re: Marx's theory as a quantitative theory

[Rakesh Narpat Bhandari <rakeshb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In 5657 Chris quotes Marx:

> "Political economy has indeed analysed value and its magnitude, however
> incompletely, and has uncovered the content concealed within these forms.
> But it has never once asked the question why this content has assumed that
> particular form, that is to say, why labour is expressed in value, and why
> the measurement of labour by its duration is expressed in the magnitude of
> the value of the product"
social labor time can only be represented by way of the value of the
commodity because due to class relations, viz. the private control of
production,  producers only have contact with each other through the
objects of their labor.   If not for the class relations of private,
commodity production by means of wage labor, labor time would not be
represented by the value of its objectifications.
But Marx's critique of classical economy's blindness to the historic
preconditions of the phenomena of which it attempted a not wholly
unsuccessful scientific investigation goes back to at least the Notes
on Mill (more importantly, Marx accepts Richard Jones's critique of
Ricardo's rent theory because Ricardo fails to understand that the
laws that he attempts to lay out depend on historical preconditions
such as the mobility of labor power, the emergence of industrial
capital, etc, and not just transhistoric factors such as differential
fertility and proximity to the market). How we are to characterize
this kind of critique and the errors which it exposes raises
important questions about the nature of Marx's theory of scientific
knowledge.


>  It is because capital
> cares about time that labours are commensurated by time, and not  v.v.
> Once the form-determinations are in place the illusion arises that labour
> time is value.


But, Chris, why do you say that capital cares about (labour?) time
rather than (say) abstract wealth? Or what is the relation between
time and the abstract form of wealth? It would seem that capital
cares about abstract wealth the measure of which may then be labor
time?
Best, Rakesh