From: Gerald_A_Levy@MSN.COM
Date: Tue Feb 15 2005 - 10:30:29 EST
1. Phil: > The role of use-value is very wide in Marx. I agree completely. At the most abstract level, the reason why there is unity as well as opposition between use-value and value is because of the specific character of labour-time required for that relation to represent value. I.e. labor-time must be socially-necessary for it to be expressed as value. Socially-necessary labour-time, though, has more than one meaning: 1. (conventional meaning) It is the time "required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time." 2. (additional meaning) for labor-time to actually count as socially-necessary, the commodity product must be sold. For it to be sold, it must have use- value. Consequently, the process whereby value becomes actual requires the presence of use-value. 2. Hans: > The private producers have human labour-power at their > disposal and they have to decide what products to produce > and what technology to use. At the risk of stating the obvious -- Within any class society, the producers do not in general decide what to produce or what technology to use. These decisions are made by those with the power to make them: by capitalists under capitalism, slave-owners under slavery, feudal lords under feudalism, etc. The producers only make these decisions in exceptional circumstances under capitalism: e.g. in worker-owned producer cooperatives. Even then, they have limited power because (unless they own a natural monopoly) the force of competition will tend to impose choices on them. > The market gives them the information necessary to do this > only if the market participants equate all their commodities > to one standard, i.e. money What the producers lack under capitalism is not "the information necessary"; what they lack is ownership and control of the means of production. Value can not be adequately grasped as a specific social relation without reference to the later stages of Marx's analysis, including Ch. 6 of Volume 1. In solidarity, Jerry
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