(Howard -- thanks for your reply to my question in 5613.) Riccardo turned the tables on me in [5611] by asking me basically the same question I asked Howard: > what about saying that value *is* objectified > labour (ideally) expressed in money? Well I agree that there is a necessary link between value and money, but this expression 'objectified labour' (along with expressions used by others such as labor 'embodied' or 'encased' in a commodity) strike me as rather odd. Labor is an *activity* performed in the production process -- money itself is not the activity of labor even when used as the means for valuing the commodity *product*. I think that there is, relatedly, a certain metaphorical aspect to Marx's expression of 'dead labor'. Looking at the matter less metaphorically, if labor is dead then it can no longer be labor. Labor is performed by the living alone. Value is created *by* labor; value is is not *itself* a [form of] labor. Consider the sculpture of David. David performed the [concrete] labor of sculpturing. He was, in addition to other things, a sculptor. Although his labor pre-debated the value relation, his sculptures (if they were now put on the market) would have an exchange-value expressed in money. Yet, we would not think of calling the *sculpture itself* "labor objectified", would we? Shouldn't the sculpture, even if it was produced under capitalist conditions and have a use-value, a value, and have that value come to be represented by the value-form (i.e. even if it is a commodity in the fullest sense of the term), be considered to be a sculpture in the concrete sense and a commodity in the more generic sense rather than an embodiment or representation of 'labor objectified'? What is 'labor objectified' anyway? In solidarity, Jerry
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