[OPE-L:6545] Re: J.D.White offers more on Sieber herein

[Christopher Arthur <cjarthur@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Paul
Thanks, via you, to Jimmy W for the additional Sieber.

>The passage from Capital on value and labour that I had in mind actually
>came from the second edition. It is: 'Human labour-power in its fluid state
> creates value, but is not in itself value.' (Capital I, Penguin, p. 143).
>There is actually an earlier instance which I found in Theories of Surplus
>Value I, p. 135: 'A quantity of labour has no value, it is not a commodity,
> but is that which transforms commodities into values...'

This conflates two issues:
'Laboour is/not value'
'Labour has/no value'
Mandel, carchedi, and others who, like Sieber, assert 'labour *is* value'
are very clear that labour is not a commodity and hence 'has' no value. The
chain of thought seems to be: labour has no value because it is what gives
commodities value, hence it 'is' value.
Compare: a wavelength is not coloured, it is what gives the experience of
colour in the normal human eye, hence , e.g., light of a certain wavelength
'is' red light.
In both cases the final conflation of cause and effect is contestable.

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