[OT] Re: Python training time (was)

[John Ochiltree]

<posted & mailed>

Alex Martelli wrote:

> Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters wrote:
> 
>> Jack Diederich <jack at performancedrivers.com> wrote previously:
>> |Marx's labour theory of value tried to set an absolute scientific
>> |standard
>> |[Marx considered himself a scientist] by stating that something was
>> |[worth
>> |excatly the amount of _human_ labor put into it.  He hedged this a bit
>> |by saying the most efficient amount of human labor
>> 
>> But understand the special meaning given to "hedge" here.  The
>> caricature "labor theory of value" Diederich describes is indeed set out
>> in the first few pages of _Poverty of Philosophy_ (and repeated in Ch
>> 1-2 of _Capital_, volume 1).
> 
> ...and in that form it's not very far from what Adam Smith
> had proposed.  E.g., it misses the important correction [by
> Ricardo] that for those productions where e.g. land or mines
> are among the factors of productions, it's the *LEAST*
> fertile/productive field or mine being worked that determines
> value (the extra production / lesser amount of labor needed
> in more-productive fields or mines is what becomes the RENT
> of a given field or mine).  But, yes, this and many other
> important corrective factors are covered elsewhere by Marx
> (often, in language so ponderous it makes Ricardo's light
> reading by comparison -- main exceptions being, I suspect,
> those passages where Engels may have lent a hand;-).
> 
> 
> Alex
Remember that the point of Marx's theory of value is that at the point where 
the value is realised the worker is alienated from the value that they have 
created by the capitalist who appropriates it.

John