In a message dated 9/23/00 8:44:06 AM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
writes:
<< The only other relevant question is whether labor creates value. For those
who think not, they do not belong on PEN-L, but that's just my opinion.
One other relevant question concerns the "value of value" -- that is to
say the ultimate social value of what immediately counts as value. Marx's
discussion of value, surplus value and labour deviated from Ricardo's
earlier analysis along lines that had already been sketched out in the
1820's by "a whole group of writings . . . which turned the Ricardian
theory of value and surplus-value against capitalist production in the
interest of the proletariat, and fought the bourgeoisie with its own
weapons."
One anonymous pamphlet, which Engels called the "most advanced outpost" of
these writings, contained the following reservation in its prefatory
remarks:
"From all the works I have read on the subject, the richest nations
in the world are those where the greatest revenue is or can be raised; as
if the power of compelling or inducing men to labour twice as much at
the mills of Gaza for the enjoyment of the Philistines, were proof
of any thing but a tyranny or an ignorance twice as powerful."
The importance of this anonymous pamphlet for Marx's own thinking about
value cannot be overstated. Some sense of its importance can be gotten
from notebook 7 of the Grundrisse, "The Chapter on Capital" and
particularly in the section headed, "Contradiction between the foundation
of bourgeois production (value as measure) and its development, Machines
etc." that begins on page 704 of the Martin Nicolaus translation
(Vintage) and continues to page 711. Marx cites the pamphlet (The Source
and Remedy of the National Difficulties) repeatedly throughout this
passage.
Once again, I'll mention that I've stitched together a web relating the
passages from the Grundrisse, Theories of Surplus Value and the Source and
Remedy pamphlet, which can be found at:
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/dispose.htm
Tom Walker
Sandwichman and Deconsultant
215-2273
