[OPE-L:4701] Re: value vs. potential value

Gerald Lev (glevy@pratt.edu)
Wed, 9 Apr 1997 18:47:16 -0700 (PDT)

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Allin wrote in [OPE-L:4698]:

> While I'm at it, I'll respond to the thread on the notion
> that value is determined in exchange.

No one that I know of on this list claimed that "value is determined in
exchange."

> How do the
> enthusiasts for this notion square it with the proposition,
> reiterated over and over and over again in Capital, that the
> value of a commodity is the labour-time _required to
> produce_ that commodity?

To begin with, there is the question of the labor-time required to
produce and *reproduce* a commodity.

Secondly, labour-time in general does not produce value -- the labour-time
must be *socially necessary*. SNLT, by my reading, has more than one
meaning in Marx. One meaning is related to the productivity of labor.
Another meaning refers to whether the labour-time is socially-necessary
from the standpoint of whether the labour-time is shown through exchange
to have a use-value. I think the key to this understanding is to view
value from the standpoint of a circuit of capital.

In solidarity, Jerry