[iDC] some notes on value...

[Johan Söderberg]

I have some additional comments to Adam's and Michel's comments to my posting about audience/labour power that I would like to share.  

Adam, you are quite right in that I take a capitalist-centric perspective. But since I do not advocate it as the only way for looking upon these questions, I dont see why it has to be reductionist. On the contrary, I find the now-time/capitalist angle a necessary complement to an analysis that starts from the horison of the future (ethical economy), so to speak. I will try to qualify my proposition.

>Linux 'wastes' labour time on a host of projects that never come to  
>anything.There simply is no linear relation  
>between the value (whatever that is) of Linux and the labour time the  
>project 'consumes'. 

Well, from a capitalist/Das Kapital point of perspective, the excess of free labour thrown into the GNU/Linux-project without fruition is beside the point, as long as the outcome is a good that competes on the market with an equivalent good (Windows) that is produced with wage labour. Those firms that enroll products from volunteer labour communities gain a "surplus profit" through the so-called "social equalisation of profit" vis-a-vis those firms that do not, speaking in Marxlingua.