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Know your enemy (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

a shovel produces the same amount of use-value whether it is sold for $5 or $25

Not disagreeing with anything you said, but use-value is a qualitative property of a commodity, not quantitative, so we can't speak of an "amount of use-value", AFAIK.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

True, and I think this is the point of contention that underlies the discussion. Currency is a stand in for exchange value, which is meant to be a zero-sum representation of 'value'. The 'transformation problem' only exists as a need to reconcile that desire to quantify what is (IMHO) a fundamentally unquantifiable thing. Just ask yourself "what is the value of my own life", and feel the humanity drain from you as you ponder the arithmetic.

The video this person is referencing critiques LTV through the lense of modern economics, which is built on quantifiable exchange values. I can't speak to Marx's intent, if he was trying to 'prove' a calculation for value and labor's objective contribution to it (I read Capital through a metaphysical lense, maybe that was wrong of me), but I find this need to rationalize price values objectively to be a waste of time.

If a pragmatist heard this conversation, they'd be asking "what do you precisely mean by 'value'?" To quote William James:

There can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere - no difference in abstract truth that doesn't express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen. The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one.