Hi Jerry, The discussion with John was informative--in fact, John spotted the numerical example which I had missed in my first reading of the Grundrisse. But it failed to satisfy me for the same reason that your comment fails to satisfy me, in that John would not accept the contention that use-value could be quantitative. The precise context of Marx's discussion was of technical change; the general context was of his discussion of the dialectic between use-value and exchange-value. On this issue you state: At 05:21 PM 3/15/01 -0500, you wrote: >(NB: as the magnitude of use-value can not be >measured as in marginalist theory by the >artificial measure of "utils", what Marx writes in >the quote above is confusing. I.e. there *is no way >of determining* whether the "use value of the >machine is significantly greater than its value"). No, it is not confusing if you appreciate Marx's interpretation of use-value. However, as I have said too many times to count, most Marxists do not understand Marx on this issue--and with that misunderstood, virtually nothing else can be understood. Remember that Marx very emphatically said the following when confronted with Wagner's interpretation of Capital: "... that hence with me use value plays an important role completely different than [it did]] in previous [political] economy, but that, *nota bene*, it only comes into the picture where such consideration [of value, use value, etc.] springs from the analysis of given economic forms, not from helter-skelter quibbling over the concepts or words `use-value' and `value'." (McLennan p. 200.) If you attempt to interpret Marx's discussion of use-value as if it is a relative of the neoclassical concept of utility, then you will misunderstand Marx: >------------------- > >If your question, however, boils down to the following: >isn't the postulate that there is an increase in >use-value and value transferred to the commodity >over and above the value of the means of production >inconsistent with Marx's perspectives on the creation >of surplus-value? ... then I will offer an answer. Far from being inconsistent with Marx's perspective on the creation of value, it is integral to it: in the case of inputs to production, use-value is *quantitative*, not qualitative. This is precisely the manner in which he derives the result that labor-power is a source of surplus-value in Capital: "The past labor that is embodied in the labor power, and the living labor that it can call into action; the daily cost of maintaining it, and its daily expenditure in work, are two totally different things. The former determines the exchange-value of the labor power, the latter is its use-value." (Capital I 188) Note that in that quote, Marx is quite definitely arguing that use-value is quantitative. To labor the point (pardon the pun), I can quite legitimately extract the following statement from that paragraph: "the living labor that it can call into action, its daily expenditure in work, is its use-value." So use-value can be quantitative in Marx's analysis: it applies whenever we are talking the sphere of the production of commodities M--C--M+, rather than the sphere of circulation C--M--C. To labor the point further, Marx makes the following statement also in Capital: "Exchange-value and use-value [are] intrinsically incommensurable magnitudes" (Marx, 1867, p. 506). I acknowledge that this confusing as you state above, but it is confusing because Marxists have not understood how Marx used the concept of use-value: not because Marx himself is confused. This is not to say, however, that Marx is never himself confused. When you state: >Marx does not claim here or elsewhere that the value >transferred to output by means of production is >greater than the *social value* of the means of >production. He only claims that the value transferred >by the means of production is equal to *or less than* >(with moral depreciation, the latter), the value of the >means of production. in general, your statement above is an accurate statement of what Marx claimed. However, it is *not* true of that one example I gave: there Marx did quite explicitly--in his use-value/exchange-value language linked to the issue of the *difference* between value creation and depreciation--consider that the value transferred to output by a machine could be greater than the value it contains: "It also has to be postulated (which was not done above) that the use-value of the machine significantly greater than its value; i.e. that its devaluation in the service of production is not proportional to its increasing effect on production." I argue that in general, after he developed the use-value/exchange-value logic, Marx's treatment of the value-creating capacity of machinery was inconsistent with his dialectical philosophy on the commodity, since his treatment amounted to arguing that in the case of machinery, and only in the case of machinery, the use-value of machinery precisely equalled its exchange-value. This contradicts his general position that use-value and exchange-value are incommensurable, and that in the case of labor as an input to production, this incommensurability translates as a difference from which surplus value emanates. If his philosophy is applied consistently--as he did in that Grundrisse example--then the conclusion arises that *any* input to production can be a source of surplus value. This is why I reject the labour theory of value, and of course TSS attempts to maintain it by arguing that economic dynamics rescues the LTV from the Sraffian critique. If it is bad philosophy, then it will be bad economics whether expressed in static or dynamic terms. Cheers, Steve Cheers, Steve
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