[OPE-L:5235] RE: : use-value as quantitative

From: Michael J Williams (mjwilliams@dmu.ac.uk)
Date: Thu Mar 22 2001 - 07:23:04 EST


1. Clarification from Steve, please:

Money and Labour-Power are not 'strict' commodities (cf Duncan's insightful
recent post) - agreed. But why is Machinery not a strict commodity: produced
by wage labour with a view to being sold for Money in a system of markets,
so replete with use-value, exchange value and value?

2. Citing Marx, Steve says:

The use-value of such things as unworked mines is a prospective
exchange-value from its output.

But (again, read my words ...) this doesn't speak to the commensurability of
value and use-value (moments of Commodity):

a) since an unworked mine is not a commodity (it is not produced by
wage-labour), it has no use-value. (Which, of course, does not mean that it
is not potentially 'use-ful')

b) the prospective exchange-value of the output dug out of the mine by
machine-assisted labour is indeed derived from the expenditure of that
labour.

Perhaps it might help if we meditate upon the standard economics meaning of
'value-added': it is indeed the value-added to the physical inputs by the
human inputs (reflected in the non-property income of those human inputs).

btw Am I wrong in recalling that whilst Rosdolsky does indeed stress the
value/use-value dialectic, he does *not* argue for the quantifiability of
use-value in value units?

michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Keen
To: 
Sent: 22/03/01 11:46
Subject: [OPE-L:5234] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: RE: RE: Re: [Mike W] Re:
use-value as     quantitative



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