Doug, I think everything is a bit off the cuff here and perhaps misses what might be important.
Among other things you wrote: "Not getting value theory right has inhibited just what political or intellectual progress exactly?" Yet this is a good question. Let me suggest some possible answers: 1. We, radicals, have little sense of how technical change takes place in capitalist society. That is, the common interpretation of Marx is that technical change is labor displacing at all costs. Laibman goes as far as to say that capitalists innovate in a "Rube Goldberg" fashion. That is, labor replacing technical change takes place at all costs. That is what ortho Marxism has held for over a century. I doubt this is true and do not impute that view to anyone, save David, in particular. So what? Seems to me that anyone with this view could easily grab hold of the idea that an alternative to capitalism could exist side by side with a society growing in such "Rube Goldberg" fashion. 2. Within traditional approaches to Marx as well as in standard eco thought, little if any attention is paid to "moral depreciation". Indeed, the qualitative and quantitative aspects of this type of depreciation disappear as one simultaneously values inputs and outputs. Thus, in theory, we can create situations in which a capitalist invests $100, ends up with $20 and have a rising rate of profit. The usual understanding of Marx's concept of valuation incorporate this absurd possibility. Put simply, using Marx's concept of value, we should be able to grasp how technical changes take place in capitalism and what are the consequent changes in valuation. If we can't, we should move on to something else. I do not feel that seeking answers to this problem is a sub for activism nor do I find the concepts alienated. John
