Historical Materialism by Devine, James 08 February 2002 00:09 UTC Doug writes: > If you mean that workers produce everything of value (in conjunction > with some goods supplied by nature), and that much division and > redivision of the spoils goes on, and that finance can obscure those > fundamentals, yes. If you mean the rest of it - OCC, the > transoformation problem, the distiction between productive and > unproductive labor, etc. - then no. Damn waste of time, I say.
The rising OCC theory seems a waste of time except those specifically interested in crisis theory (and the dogmatic version is just a pain, like all dogma), while the Ricardian "transformation problem" (i.e. the derivation of mathematical relations between prices and values) seems a total distraction. But your book is suggesting that all of Wall Street is involved in unproductive labor, Doug. Jim D. ^^^^^^^^ CB: On the uselessness of all dogma to science or real truthseeking thought, what about the fact that geneticists term one of their central principles a dogma: there is no genetic inheritance of acquired characteristics. I mean the biologists literally refer to it as a "dogma". It doesn't seem to play an unscientific or deadheaded role there.
