On Mon, 24 Jul 1995 [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: >JOHN NOW SAYS: >WHAT? CONCRETE LABOR DOES HAVE A TIME DIMENSION. LABOR DOES >NOT BECOME ABSTRACT BY NOTING HOW LONG HOW LONG IT LASTS. >ABSTRACT LABOR IN CAPITALIST SOCIETY ONLY BECOMES ABSTRACT VIA >THE MARKET. ARE ALL CONCRETE LABOR HOURS ABLE TO BE COMPARED >WITHOUT REFERENCE TO PRICES [JUST BECAUSE, JRE] THE TASKS PREFORMED TAKE TIME? I THINK NOT. >_______________________________ >How does this happen, i.e. "via the market" John? What kind of market is this? > >Cheers, ajit sinha ______________________ John Ernst says: Let me keep it simple. The only way any quantity of labor can become abstract (social) is via exchange. Given that so much linen exchanges for so much gold, the labor that produced the linen becomes abstract(social) labor in that process. Without exhange, the concrete labor that produced the linen is simply concrete labor and does not have the dual nature of labor that Marx "discovered." Thus, abstract labor can only be seen by looking at the the prices. _________________________________ So you are saying that you must know prices to determine value? Now, two questions: (1) what is your theory of price determination (and what kind of price it is), and (2) if value is defined in labor-times, how is the labor-time quantified? Cheers, ajit sinha
