[PEN-L:27271] Re: LTV and income disparity

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 25/06/02 11:22 -0700, you wrote:

> Nancy, to reconcile what Gil says below with what I said: we really don't
> disagree (on this point).


I am glad Nancy, you are getting thoughtful responses to your question. In
haste this morning and needing to catch the time and tide. Forgive me for
stating things as an assertion.

You are absolutely right in your fundamental perception that the
distribution of exchange value is a zero sum game.

This is most important for progressive people in the imperial metropolises
(?) of this world, especially the USA, to understand.

Your knowledgeable anthropology critics are broadly reiterating the
conventional subjective theory of value.

The core truth of the zero sum game of exchange value is *disguised* by
circumstance and by false ideology.

The most important circumstance is that with rising capitalist
productivity, which Marx recognised vividly in a text like the Communist
Manifesto, the sum total of use values, of products of social labour, in
the world can increase.

But use value is not the same as exchange value.

Also the total number of wage labourers in the world can increase as small
producers pour off the land at an unprecedented rate in the history of the
world.

The widening disparities of exchange value may be mitigated by reforms such
as the latest agreement at the G8 about Africa.

Nevertheless the immiseration of the people of Africa is *directly* linked
to the centralisation and concentration of capital in countries like the
USA and England.

(From which the intelligentsia of the west benefit as we stroll around the
shopping areas of the more interesting suburbs, sustained periodically by
the odd frappacino in surroundings subtly suggestive of some fetishised
link with care free south american peasants).

Chris Burford

London