[p2p-research] p2presearch Digest, Vol 19, Issue 150

[Franz Nahrada]

Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> writes:
>Franz:
> 
>Another countryman of yours, Ludwig Wittgenstein, said that knowledge is
>ultimately predicated on (reasonable) agreement.  To say that LTV is a
>"law of nature" is a sort of nihilism that leaves no possible rebuttal. 
>You cannot have proof of this because there is mountains of evidence
>against it.  If it was meant as science (and it was) it is simply an
>error--a bad theory.  If it is normative--that is, a statement of how
>things ought to be rather than how they are (scientific), it is a
>normative theory that civilizations the world over have repeatedly
>rejected.    

Sorry, I was not prepared for that kind of misunderstanding .... the Marx
that you have so vigorously critizised is neither normatively nor
otherwise positively related to Labour Theory of Value. He is just saying
that in a society where there is no a priori arrangement of division of
labour actors are doomed to have the social validity of their efforts in
the form of value. And, with the inevitability of a law of nature, the
aberration from social average productivity by what reason ever will
depreciate their labour.
>
> 
>I've had similar discussions with many other forms of nihilistic
>fundamentalism.  You are not seeing the world through different eyes, you
>are simply avoiding actual discussion and open inquiry.  As I have said
>before, if one cannot begin with some basis of discussion (other than
>canonical acceptance of some text--be it Marx or the Gospel of St. Luke),
>there is really nothing to be said.

There is no canonical acceptance of some text here but a logical step of
thoughts. If a society treats value as an objective property of things,
something which Marx called fetishism, value can be deciphered as the form
of their social action totally separated from their willfull influence.
Value is not money and value is not not money. Money is the form of a
content which is relational, a chaotic everlasting process (as long as
commodity production exists) for the validity of a commodity as part of
the societies labor.

The fact that money gets a life of its own is based on that fundamental
relation. 
>
>Your canon (Marx) blinds you from actual study.  Therefore to criticize
>others for not seeing the world through your text is irreducibly absurd.
>
Did I clarify your misunderstanding?

Franz
>