@socantre@SerenadingVoid@Fishythefox2 No one said preferences = random chaos. Subjective preference is ordinal. 'I prefer A to B' doesn't tell you A = 20 B. To get a specific price, you need a cardinal anchor, which utility theory can't provide without fake 'utils.' The stability of prices comes from SNLT.
@socantre@SerenadingVoid@Fishythefox2 This applies to things like some insane kook making randoms predictions for the future, not to someone accurately describing the processes which leads to specific, observable outcomes.
@socantre@SerenadingVoid@Fishythefox2 The 'hours' in SNLT aren't raw clock hours, they're abstract labor hours produced by social processes that markets *actually perform*. The util analogy fails because utils are deliberately unobservable by design, whereas labor time is materially real.
@socantre@SerenadingVoid@Fishythefox2 Wrong. Labour can be reduced to a homogeneous, measurable substance by the real social process of exchange. You cannot do that with utility.
@socantre@SerenadingVoid@Fishythefox2 ...You can’t have an equation between two different things without a common property being measured. The existence of a stable ratio already presumes a common substance. The only coherent one is abstract labour.
@socantre@SerenadingVoid@Fishythefox2 Exchange takes the form of an equation, like 1 coat = 20 yards of linen. Subjective preference explains why you trade, but not the ratio. Without an objective equal substance regulating that ratio, prices would be random chaos. Marx provides that with abstract labour time.
@Mister_RoyalT@Circles1682@TheIroncane It looked fairly uninteresting. AAA games are really cinematic but that's about it. Says nothing about how satisfying the gameplay is.
@socantre@SerenadingVoid@Fishythefox2 Labour's heterogeneity is resolved by exchange itself, which treats all concrete labours as interchangeable abstract human effort, measurable in duration. Use-value has no common unit. The symmetry is false. Only labour provides a quantifiable substance for value.
@socantre@SerenadingVoid@Fishythefox2 As for "why not socially necessary usefulness":
Usefulness is qualitative, not quantitative. Marx already requires a commodity to be useful. You can't abstract 'utility' into a measurable homogeneous substance like you can with labour time.
@StealthMode987@SerenadingVoid@Fishythefox2 They don't need to afford them. The means of production already exist because workers built them with their own unpaid labour. Workers don't buy back what's already theirs, they would just take it back because it belongs to them already.