[OPE] The Labour Theory of Value: a Marginal Analysis

In his treatise, Ludwig van Mises - like Marx in his 1859 work - acknowledges a distinction between objective and subjective use-value:

The praxeological notion of utility (subjective use-value in the terminology of the earlier Austrian economists) must be sharply distinguished from the technological notion of utility (objective use-value in the terminology of the same economists). Use-value in the objective sense is the relation between a thing and the effect it has the capacity to bring about. It is to objective use-value that people refer in employing such terms as the "heating value" or "heating power" of coal. Subjective use-value is not always based on true objective use-value. There are things to which subjective use-value is attached because people erroneously believe that they have the power to bring about a desired effect. On the other hand there are things able to produce a desired effect to which no use-value is attached because people are ignorant of this fact. http://oll.libertyfund.org/?option=com_staticxt&staticfile=show.php%3Ftitle=1893&chapter=110271&layout=html&Itemid=27

I don't see there's anything wrong with that distinction as such.

Jurriaan

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Received on Sun Sep 14 06:54:40 2008