> >I thought I was pretty mild. Referring to your interlocutor as desperate and inward turning is clearly not mild, but I suspect that I shall be blamed for the rancor on the list as I was supposed to take the heat for Paul Phillips' explosion.
> >> >>Moreover, note that I raised the question whether and how any theory >>other than labor value makes sense of moral depreciation and the >>paradoxes to which it gives rise. You give no reply. > >Haven't really thought about it. but this was my reply to your query. Yes of course the input means of production can be said to embody/represent indirect and direct labor time, you concede, but why does this make them values, you seemed to ask. And my reply was that their character as values is revealed by the threat that they will undergo moral depreciation, i.e., come to represent less socially necessary abstract labor time, and the compulsion the ruling class puts on the working class to consume them before they are morally depreciated. This is how Marx explains what puzzled JS Mill: the best tools for the reduction of labor become unfailing means for the prolongation and intensification of the working day. Marx explains this puzzle by understanding these means of production as values-in-process, not simply given technical conditions of production. >> > >A fallacy: Your theory preducts that there will crises. The theory >posits X. There are crises. So X exists. I have argued, however, >that the main lines of the theoey can be reconstituted without X and >still give us the same results. You're not reading carefully. The theory explains both the recurrence of general, protracted crises and the means by which they are overcome. The law of value thus pits so called orthodox Marxists against underconsumptionist social democrats. > Also, I note that Marxisn crisis theory is highly underdeveloped, >and IMHO the best version of it, Brenner's, does not use value >theory. Anyway, I'm plum tuckered out. Does Brenner agree that he does not use value theory? As far as I can see, he is in part saying that the full value of commodities could not be realized due to international competition. But Marx's crisis theory is able to explain the onset of crisis even when demand is strong enough for commodities to be realized at their full value. rb
