On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 10:38 AM, Jim Farmelant wrote: > > What is missing is precisely what Frank insisted upon: the humanistic > middle link.
The inputs and outputs of planning consist of monetized or monetizable products, raw materials and services. The humanistic middle link, in my view, is the time in which we live our lives, as distinct from the time that measures the quantity of labour power. This is the sense of time at one's own disposal, either personally or collectively. Marx addressed disposable time in the Grundrisse and continued to address it, albeit with less emphasis, in Capital. That lack of emphasis, along with the neoclassical treatment of "leisure time" as a normal good has led to a commodified, colonized view of free time by many -- possibly most -- Marxists. Somehow the discussion of free time gets catagorized as a cultural digression rather than being seen as fundamental to Marx's critique of bourgeois political economy. Four days ago I posted a note to marxmail announcing a blog post on Marx's Jan. 8, 1868 letter to Engels ( https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40085 ) in which he enumerated "the three fundamentally new elements" of Capital and replied to Duhring's "modest objections to the determination of value" with the statement that "no form of society can prevent the labour time at the disposal of society from regulating production..." Let me rephrase Marx's statement: disposable labour time is indispensable to the regulation of production in all forms of society. This is, in effect a restatement of Marx's discovery, documented in his 1857-58 manuscripts that "the whole development of wealth rests on the creation of disposable time." Without disposable time, there is no disposable labour time and without disposable labour time (aka superfluous or surplus labour time) there is no surplus value, no capitalism. When Ronald Coase writes about transaction costs, I can agree as long as it is understood that not all transaction costs are monetizable. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#40144): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/40144 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/117228881/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
