Re Steve K's [5206]: > (snip, JL) Marx was using use-value in a distinctly > quantitative way when deriving the > source of surplus value from the difference > between the exchange-value and > the use-value of labor-power. Marx derived surplus value based on the difference between what workers were paid in wages (= to, on average, the value of labor-power) and the value created by those workers. This does not require that use-value is quantitative. All it requires is that there is surplus labor time, and thereby unpaid labor time, and that surplus labor time comes to take the value-form. (NB: it ALSO requires that the product is sold and thereby has its use-value and value validated so that, in the circuit M-C-M', C can be converted into M'). Use-value, not as quantity but as quality, is presumed. If the product which was presumed to have use-value when setting a money price prior to sale is shown ex post not to have use-value that it can not then also have value and exchange-value. I.e. *without this quality there can be no quantity*. Thus, uv is necessarily *linked* to quantity even though it is not itself quantity. But, I don't think this discussion (at least in terms of the 2 of us) is advancing. I.e. we seem to be repeating the same things. This seems to be based on different understandings of the nature of the commodity (which, I believe, is based on differing methodologies). In solidarity, Jerry
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