Jonathan Nitzan [new]:
We see this "de-linking thesis" as deeply problematic (see "Dominant Capital and the New Wars", 2004, especially Sections 3 and 7, http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/archive/00000001/). To speak of prices as "distortions" of values is meaningful only if: (1) Values do EXIST in a quantitative sense. (2) Values have a DEFINITE magnitude. To test the "de-linking" proposition is meaningful only if (1) and (2) hold, and: (3) We can OBSERVE values and compare them to prices. In our view, none of these three conditions holds. (1) Values (measured in abstract labor time) do not exist. (2) Even if they do exist, they cannot have a definite magnitude. And (3) even if they do have a definite magnitude, they are forever invisible. As we see it, capitalism has only ONE quantitative reality: the reality of nominal prices and pecuniary finance. There is no shadow quantitative reality of "real" of values and "real" capital. Jonathan Nitzan http://www.bnarchives.net <http://www.bnarchives.net/> ^^^^^^ CB: Your theory seems to be only with respect to nominal prices and pecuniary finance. Even if there are no exchange-values, value measured in abstract labor time, there is concrete labor which produces a wealth of use-values. Even if there is no shadow quantitative reality of "real" values or "real" capital based on any "real" exchange-values, there is a quantitative reality of use-values, regardless of its relationship or lack of relationship to nominal prices and pecuniary finance. Today, there is a world-historic abundance of material objects and material actions, which "we" would still term "wealth". If you don't see this quantitative reality as part of capitalism, you have one eye closed. It is not invisible. Even if the nominal prices and pecuniary financial real substances the your minds contemplate are spontaneously generated on Wall Street, by them the capitalists make property claims on the material objects and material actions. You are the ones who use the term "shadow" to describe this relationship, and then attribute the term to our theory. Show me where "we" called the one the shadow of the other. I said the nominal prices and pecuniary financial sector is metaphorically bubbly, which would imply you are occupying your minds soley with a substance in the form of gas filled liquid, but that's just poetry. Shadows, bubbles, this ain't physics, as we were joking about. You, Jonathon, say, " 2) Even if they (values measured in abstract labortime) do exist, they cannot have a definite magnitude. And (3) even if they do have a definite magnitude, they are forever invisible. " ^^^^^ CB: Are you saying that exchange-values might exist and might have a definite magnitude ? We already know they are "invisible", making experimentation hard. That's why we need the force of abstraction to keep track of them. It may be that they don't have both a definite position and velocity at the same time, though :>)
