Re: M-TH: WTO and value

[The World Socialist movement (via The Socialist Party of Great Britain)]

Dear all,

----------
> The World Trade Organisation negotiations with China is clear evidence
that the
> law of
> value does not operate in an unadulterated fashion. It is evidence that
there
> is no such
> thing as free trade in any comprehensive sense. 

Are we talking about the same law of value here? It is bourgeois economics
which tries to kick sand in workers' eyes with the price=value argument.
All value comes from human labour. Even the Russian's admitted this, as
early as Stalin in 40-41 (ghostwritten...) and their problem in calculation
was precisely that, rather than suspend the law of value, they had to
second guess it! Prices is the means whereby the ruling class divide up the
surplus, as I put forward in an earlier post: it also affects the working
class in that they are the proprietors of their labour, and as the price
for their labour falls a percentage will starve, while during a rise a
percentage will do well, unless for them the rule of price is suspended and
they get what is required to maintain their labour through some more or
less comprehensive welfare system, in the same way that the state runs
certain vital services to ensure that rather than being subject to the
vagaries of price they can be relied on, e.g. fire services.
        And free trade, access to surplus via political power,... what does it
matter to us as workers? A politico will respond to a shareholder by trying
to limit finance capital, and the reverse also. This is about the ruling
class's access to our surplus which they have exploited from us.

 Consequently to try to apply Capital to the contemporary world
> economic situation
> in any pure way will simply produce conceptual abstraction.

Actually, I find Marx's analysis far more penetrating than those who claim
descent from him.,

Simon

Only messages signed by a Party officer are considered official
communications


     --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---