Re: Falsifiability and the law of value

[Tom Walker <timework@xxxxxxxxx>]

"A cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of
nothing." -- Oscar Wilde

The law of value -- whether right or wrong, scientific or not -- is only one
side of the story, on the other side of which is to be found the dynamic,
might I say anti-capitalist, kernal. The other side is that value is not
real wealth. From the perspective of real wealth, the transformation problem
is trivial. The basic statement of the problem -- from an anonymous 1821
pamphlet, _The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, Deduced from
Principles of Political Economy, in a Letter to Lord John Russell._ -- could
probably better be understood as allegorical rather than 'scientific' in
either intent or execution.

Keynes said he would rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong. The
non-identity of value and real wealth is vaguely right whether or not value
is precisely determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time
embodied in the sum of commodities. One might add that since the qualifier
of social necessity is itself vague and hugely transitory, there could be no
way of verifying the proposition empirically. The world or social formation
in which socially necessary labour time determines value has never
empirically existed. Nor is there a frictionless plane that I am aware of.
Have I overlooked one? If I have, please send me the coordinates for it so I
can build my perpetual motion machine. I will call it "Capital."

So what is "real wealth"? That is the big problem. According to said
pamphlet, cited with enthusiastic approval by Marx, "real wealth is
disposable time and nothing more." That is to say, real wealth is free time.
Period. So what, then, is "free time"? Is it free time when an unemployed
worker is looking for work? Is it free time when an exhausted employee is
slumped in front of a television set staring at commercial messages? Is it
free time when a commuter is inching along in rush hour traffic? In other
words, does free time indicate merely the absense of a direct wage and
consequently a vacation from the realm of production and accumulation of
surplus value. On the contrary, one would suppose that such colonized time
is "less free" even than waged labour time.

Is there anyone out there who agrees that the problem of free time is _the
problem_ and the solution of transformation equations offers no solution to
the problem of free time?

"How far my own opinions will be conclusive with your Lordship's, I dare not
hazard a conjecture; but as many of them are uncommon, they may, as Hume
says, 'repay some cost to understand them.' But, my Lord, if they are true,
they have most important consequences; I therefore earnestly intreat you not
to reject them without a patient and attentive examination." -- anonymous
Post-Ricardian pamphleteer

http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/remedy.htm

Tom Walker
604 255 4812