Tom Walker says:>All I meant to refer to was the increasingly social character of production, certainly not its equalization or de-skilling...<
Then, I'd agree with you. I was confused about what you meant. (BTW, I like to talk about the increasingly overt nature of the socialization of production, since as Marx pointed out, capitalism has been socialized all along.)
>Jim, I still can't grasp what you mean by "empirical numbers". As someone who works with statistics all the time, I can assure you that
there are quantitative facts and qualitative facts. It doesn't do the
quantitative facts an honour to insist that qualitative facts must be
represented as quantities before they can be granted equal status as
facts...<
no, I wasn't excluding qualitative facts. But you seemed to be talking about a trend, which might be quantifiable.
I am quite familiar with the limits of "empirical numbers." Such data can _never_ finish a discussion, end a debate, just as rational-deductive arguments never can settle any question about the (real) world.[*] But it's always good to try to make some effort to connect with the real world rather than to get lost in rationalist space, in which everything is logical but likely similar to a sand-castle built in the air. That's why Marx starts bringing in empirical numbers as soon as he can in CAPITAL.
[*] it's part of trying to think scientifically that no answer is ever final or immune to empirio-criticism, logical nit-picking, or methodological critique. The best we can do is to attain an understanding that is better than the others available.
JD
