What a refreshing pleasure to hear from you again, even it on a sucject I *deliberately* bought it up again.: Even the tools which the factory owner provided were, according to Marx, necessarily produced by other workers subjected to their own exploitation.
:Tools don't *add* value, they simply transfer it from themselves to the commodity, thus only Labour is *adding* value.
Yes (dead labor) I do understand how it is positioned - and how this leads to the ratio of tool-person changing with more and more tech, which should decrease average wages and numbers of employed - but which hasnt.
: The base line for shop-bloke is the amount he paid for it, which is in turn set by the amount the whole-sailer paid for it, in turn set by the production costs. To focus on desire is eroneous, because it focusses on the end of the production process, and not on, say, the whole-saler, whose desire (use-value) for the commodity is nil, except as potential exchange value.
Its useful to look at what the wholesaler has a use-value for other stuff and hence why he seeks to trade other stuff for it. Its only interesting if there is a use-value for it - its only valuable when there is a use-value and when something can be exchanged (the realization of that value in terms of exchange-value)
On the widget example - the price of Aluminium is derived by the degree to which all the players in the market have use-value and exchangable value for it. Alumium may be 'too expensive' for widget A because the folks making widget B find it so darned useful they exchange that much more for it - so the 'price' is higher. Still exchange value driven by perceived use-value ~ 'desire' rather than an adding up of labor.
: Eitehr way, you can't escape the fact that the workers alone add value that can be realised in the market place- no matter what form that value takes.
Right, now you can see that labor-force value can only be tacked on post exchange - and that the same work can take many values dependant upon 'desire' and not *dependant* upon adding up labor.
: No, the *price* has changed, price is distinct from value, and fluctuates around value- hence people get a bargain when they think a good is sold below value.
The value, in the above, remains forever an unrealised concept. If it cost 1$ what does anyone care the 'value' may or may not be.
: Thats land, which is subject to laws of rent, Marx himself made this point in the 'Critique of the gotha programme' correcting the error of that rpogramme which stated all value comes from labour. plus, that above is *use* value.
Land, without labor applied, cannot derive its value from labor - its only when poeple build houses (my point) at which point a strict interpretation of LTV furnishes the worker with more $ than a miserable backdrop - because the additional money would only go the rotten capitalists if the worker didnt get it.
: We've been through this before gee, and I've refuted these exact points before.
You certainly argue your case very well, and do so without offering book titles as maginal cure-ll incantations, but refutation requires that no other possible interpretation is possible - and I would contest (Hell, lets not cliam glory - hundreds of economists do contest it)
Anyway, nice to hear from you - trust all is well and dandy.
