Gil writes:
Some questions and comments on Ken's discussion of the "Lockean proviso"
>Mixing one's labor with land gave "natural" ownership claims to land
>according to Locke. However, there is as Nozick (the erstwhile libertarian)
Erstwhile? What has he become?
COMMENT: He has become a type of communitarian. He now thinks that group values
are important and for individual fulfilment these values are essential.
In his recent work he writes of the importance of family and his Jewish
cultural heritage and group values.
(One chapter in his THE EXAMINED LIFE discusses this)
>notes an explicit proviso to the effect that there be enough and as good left
> over for others. Even Nozick recognizes the problems inherent in this idea.
Locke notes this proviso in his 2nd treatise. (it wasn't clear from Ken's
wording whether he meant to suggest that the proviso originates with
Nozick). In its original formulation it's pretty damaging to any attempt to
establish a "natural" basis for ownership of things like land: in a world
where space and time matter, there can virtually never be "enough and as
good left over for others."
Which is one reason why Nozick suggests relaxing the proviso to requiring
only that others are rendered *no worse off* by someone's appropriation of
land. Gerald Cohen attacks this formulation, but that's another issue.
> " What are the boundaries of what labor is mixed with? If a private
>astronaut clears a place on Mars, has he mixed his labor with
>(so that he comes to
>own) the whole planet, the whole unihabited universe, or just a particular
>plot? Which plot does an act bring under ownership?" (ANARCHY, STATE, & UTOPIA)
> Nozick himself notes that if someone dug a well in an area and
>that was the only place that there was water in the area that the Lockean
>proviso would imply that the well-digger would not have any exclusive
>"natural" ownership claims since it would violate the proviso. It seems then on
>this labor theory that one would not necessarily have a claim to the total
>value produced by one's labor nor natural ownership claims as a result of
>mixing ones labor with an unowned object.
I think this point raises important questions. Suggestion: the scenario
above involves a situation of "absolute" as opposed to simply "economic"
scarcity ("...that was the only place that there was water in the area..."),
whereas Marx's theory of value arguably pertains to a setting without
absolute scarcity--and also, for that matter, without increasing returns to
scale or systemic production externalities. There are some hints of this
reading in Capital, V. I, the key one being Marx's insistence that
use-value cannot inform the determination of exchange-value. Unless Marx
meant this *simply as a tautology*--i.e. he *defined* exchange-value as
something that cannot be influenced quantitatively by use-value-- (and more
on that in a second), this is clearly not so for absolutely scarce goods.
Gil also writes:
Now, as to the definition of exchange-value, Ken writes
>P.S. I thought that Marx's theory of value was about exchange value within
>capitalism. It presupposes that there are utility values or use values as well
>as exchange value. It is
>only a theory about what determines exchange value (not price)
> within a certain economic system.
Hmm. What can the "exchange-value" of a good (as opposed, for example, the
good's "value") refer to, if not to price *in some sense*?
COMMENT: What I wrote here was incorrect or at least misleading. I simply
wanted to distinguish exchange value from price. Price is determined in general
by exchange value and hence the socially necessary labor but is not identical
with such.
"Market-prices and market values will continue to differ. The value of
a commodity is determined by the labour-time in it in only a "vague and
meaningless form"
Nevertheless the law of value dominates market prices." and
"Whatever may be the way in which the prices of the various commodities
are first fixed or mutually regulated, the law of value always dominates their
movements."
(From Freedman MARX ON ECONOMICS p. 140 quoting from DAS KAPITAL iii I
believe)
Doesn't this make it clear that Marx distinguishes exchange value
from price?
Cheers, Ken Hanly
> It is not a
>general philosophical theory of value, nor does it pretend to be. As for
>machines contributing to value, isn't it part of the Marxist view that machines
>are themselves the result of surplus value produced by labor i.e. dead as
>compared to living labor?
I guess one possible thrust of my questions is that, even with the
qualifications noted by Ken, a labor-based theory of value in Marxian guise
might run into many of the same difficulties as would its Lockean
alternative--though the significance of the difficulties might be
*interpreted* very differently. Just a hunch.
Gil Skillman
