Folks, I think it's time to comment on this dueling, which, despite Mike's
explicit request, ratchets up agonistic rhetoric while refusing genuine
engagement. It's like a game of trompe d'oeil, one insisting that the
picture shows an old woman, the other insisting that t shows a vase; both
marshalling the same evidence to refute the other's position, in ping pong.
This, by the way, is why Lois Holzman believes that knowledge gets us
nowhere, and here we see a performance that proves it. The point of this
little game is to win -- that is, to be the smarter, more knowledgeable,
more right One. The process and outcome of this little game is of NO
INTEREST to anyone but the players and DOES NOT BELONG ON THIS LIST.
Judy
At 01:20 AM 4/26/01 -0700, you wrote:
>Despite my sincere intention to drop this thread, I can't allow Phil's
>erroneous presentation of marx's theory to stand unchallenged.
>
>Phil wrote:.
>>
>> Marx's position is this
>>
>> 'Labour is *not* the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the
>> source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth
>> consists!) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of
>> nature, human labour power' (Marx, 1875/1972, p. 382)
>>
>> Marx, K. (1875/1972). Critique of the Gotha program. In R.C. Tucker (Ed.),
>> The Marx-Engels Reader (382-405). New York: W.W. Norton.
>>
>
>Now had Phil bothered to continue with the passage he cites he would have
>included the following:
>
>(same page, same book, same edition, next sentence).
>
>"The above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct in
>so far as it is *implied* that labour is performed with the appurtenant
>subjects and instruments. But a socialist programme cannot allow such
>bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the *conditions* that alone give
>them meaning. And in so far as man from the beginning behaves toward
>nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labour, as an
>owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labour becomes the source of use
>values, therefore also of wealth."
>
>yes, one cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the
>*conditions* that alone give them meaning, since it is labor and labor alone
>that confers value in Marx's economic theory. Or as he said more clearly
>in the first pages of Capital:
>
>"A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human
>labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How, then,
>is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of
>the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article."
>
>As Marx pointed out, some things cannot simply be passed over in silence, in
>particular when they are not debatable issues such as whether Marx had an
>ecology; a topic I certainly look forward to exploring in Fosters book,
>since from what I've read thanks to Bill's posts, Foster does appear to have
>understood what Marx said unequivocally and about which I've never before
>the past few days heard any disagreement. I suppose that minimal level of
>understanding would be a precondition for any discussion of issues that
>require a subtler comprehension of marxist theory in general, or even the
>phrase "treats her as belonging to him" in which I'm sure some of
>participants of xmca might well find disturbing from a variety of
>perspectives but which certainly doesn't sound like the native american
>notion that humans belong to the earth, not the other way around.
>
>Paul H. Dillon
>
>
>
>Paul H. Dilloon
>
>
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