Ted wrote: > What do you mean by "value"? > > If you mean "value" in the sense of capitalist > exchange value, the embodied "labour" involved > is "alienated" labour, i.e. it's the antithesis > of the activity of a "universally developed > individual" in the realms of either necessity > or freedom if a communist society. Such labour > is constituted by the internal relations that > define capitalism. Marx treats it as > maintaining sufficient self-identity within > these relations to be treated as a "variable" > as in the labour theory of "value".
I could quibble with your description above, but -- yes -- I meant value in this sense. Here's the thing? What is the "substance" of value in this sense? Labor, the human purposeful activity that regulates and directs the appropriation of nature to make it conform to human design. To the extent labor *is* -- i.e. to the extent labor has a quality -- then it is susceptible to quantitative variation. If the "good life" is possible, then it must exist in embryo in labor. If labor doesn't lodge the good life in embryo, then the good life is unattainable (because labor, in this very general sense of the category, is the way we relate to nature and to one another). If labor (and the good life) *is*, if it has a quality, then it is susceptible to quantitative variation. QED. > If you mean "value" in the sense of the aesthetic > value created by the activity of a universally > developed individual, that "value", as elaborated > by Marx, is not a "variable" capable of > quantitative variation. It's an objectification > of the "laws of beauty". Value in this sense and in the above sense are clearly related. But let me just note here that aesthetic values are also "capable of quantitative variation." Question: Is there any sense in which you can say that something is aesthetically valuable as compared to something else not aesthetically valuable? If your answer is yes, then you are admitting that aesthetic values are variables. Because I'm sure you've heard of binary variables. Furthermore, if there's any sense in which you can say that something is *more* aesthetically valuable than something else, then you are also admitting that aesthetic values are variables. QED. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
