Jim Devine wrote: > Note my clause that starts with the word "when" > in the statement above. Julio's statements apply > only if it is I who is making a decision about > what to do with my own life. But in this case, I > was talking about someone else making the decision > _for_ me.
I noted the word "when." If what I say applies only if you make the choice, then your argument becomes even more absurd. If in your own practice, you don't value your life infinitely, then why do you expect others to act as if your life were infinitely valuable? How would you act if your life were infinitely valuable? How would others act? > Julio suggests that Marx's law of value applies to > human life. I don't think so, since he was only > talking about the value of commodities (items > produced for sale or treated as if they were for > sale). In a world where slavery has been abolished, > a human life is a not a commodity and it isn't > treated like a commodity. Rather, it's labor-power > (the ability to work during a specific time period) > that's treated as if it's a commodity. No. You are mixing things up. Re-read what I wrote. In Marx's jargon, value is a social *form*. A political democracy is also a social *form*. I'm talking about *content* here: what Marx called in Capital the "essential" or "material determination of value." In other words, I'm referring to the *material* (as opposed to the *social*) foundation of value. Human life -- as specifically human -- is a product, a social product, a product of social labor. Private ownership, a given type of political democracy, etc. are specific, historically confined forms under which human *material* life is reproduced. The *material* content of the process is inherent to the reproduction of human life in general, i.e. a sine qua non fact under any social form. The material content of the process is easier to see by reference to a communist society, which excludes commodity production. Under communism, you still have to allocate social labor between the production of "safety" and the production of other goods. You have a different social form coordinating this allocation -- other than market exchange, or political democracy under conditions of wealth inequality, which are rather opaque social forms. See Marx's letter to L. Kugelmann (July 11, 1868) or Capital I, ch. 1's section on commodity fetishism or the 1857 introduction. In fact, the underlying distinction goes back at least to Protagoras (see Guthrie's book or Gerald Cohen's book on Marx's theory of history). _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
