"A cynic is one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing." -- Oscar Wilde
The law of value -- whether right or wrong, scientific or not -- is only one side of the story, on the other side of which is to be found the dynamic, might I say anti-capitalist, kernal. The other side is that value is not real wealth. From the perspective of real wealth, the transformation problem is trivial. The basic statement of the problem -- from an anonymous 1821 pamphlet, _The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, Deduced from Principles of Political Economy, in a Letter to Lord John Russell._ -- could probably better be understood as allegorical rather than 'scientific' in either intent or execution. Keynes said he would rather be vaguely right than precisely wrong. The non-identity of value and real wealth is vaguely right whether or not value is precisely determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time embodied in the sum of commodities. One might add that since the qualifier of social necessity is itself vague and hugely transitory, there could be no way of verifying the proposition empirically. The world or social formation in which socially necessary labour time determines value has never empirically existed. Nor is there a frictionless plane that I am aware of. Have I overlooked one? If I have, please send me the coordinates for it so I can build my perpetual motion machine. I will call it "Capital." So what is "real wealth"? That is the big problem. According to said pamphlet, cited with enthusiastic approval by Marx, "real wealth is disposable time and nothing more." That is to say, real wealth is free time. Period. So what, then, is "free time"? Is it free time when an unemployed worker is looking for work? Is it free time when an exhausted employee is slumped in front of a television set staring at commercial messages? Is it free time when a commuter is inching along in rush hour traffic? In other words, does free time indicate merely the absense of a direct wage and consequently a vacation from the realm of production and accumulation of surplus value. On the contrary, one would suppose that such colonized time is "less free" even than waged labour time. Is there anyone out there who agrees that the problem of free time is _the problem_ and the solution of transformation equations offers no solution to the problem of free time? "How far my own opinions will be conclusive with your Lordship's, I dare not hazard a conjecture; but as many of them are uncommon, they may, as Hume says, 'repay some cost to understand them.' But, my Lord, if they are true, they have most important consequences; I therefore earnestly intreat you not to reject them without a patient and attentive examination." -- anonymous Post-Ricardian pamphleteer http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/remedy.htm Tom Walker 604 255 4812
