File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/97-02-10.192, message 47


Date: Sun, 26 Jan 1997 00:02:38 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: A Question re: DK


On Sun, 12 Jan 1997 plato-AT-sk.sympatico.ca wrote:

>         I hate to interrupt this love-fest, but I have a question that
> relates to "Das Kapital"...
>         I wonder if anyone can fill me in on the importance of the
> distinction between various kinds of "labor" in DK. For instance, the
> difference between abstract and concrete labor. I'm part of a study group
> wherein I have taken the position that:
> 
>         1. Use-value and other contrasting forms of value are on a
> continuous scale, from the simplest relative to the producer (use-value) to
> the most abstract (profit).

No. They are different creatures. Use-value is what things are good
for in terms of their intrinsic properties. Exchange value is the ratios
at which commodities--and useful things only become commodities in market
contexts--trade for on the market. Marx thinks this is related to what he
calls just "value," which is the fact that everything use we "embodies"
some labor to make it a use-value. In markets, this value because
quantified as socially necessary "abstract" (unskilled) labor time. Marx
thinks that in general prices (the ratios at which things exchange) are
related in a complex way to SNALT. Profit is something else again. It is
the money expression of surplus value. Marx distinguishes between
necesasry labor, which must be expected to pay the worker's wage and cover
the price of the materials used up in production, and surplus labor, which
is embodied in the stuff that capitalists take and sell. If they sell them
for more than what they made, they have realized the surplus value and
made a profit.

>         2. The kind of labor used in the production of these values is
> likewise characterised as "concrete", which produces use-value for the
> worker, to "abstract" which produces wealth for the capitalist.
> 
The distinction is this. Concrete labor is the particular type of labor
that goes into making U-values. Capitalists, according to Marx, don't care
about this, although he's wrong about that, because the profit they get is
surplus value, which is abstract or unskilled labor time embodied in the
stuff they sell.

> Am I completely wrong about this? My study partner claims that I don't
> grasp the importance of the "dual nature" of labor. I tend to think he's
> possibly making more out of it than he should. I think it's Marx's way of
> saying that the value of a commodity (and hence, its method of production)
> is determined by the attitude society takes toward it, not that there is
> some objective quality called "value" that somehow mysteriously exists
> within the commodity itself.

Marx does not think that there is a natural property called value. But
value is not a matter of the attitude society takes towards useful things.
It is an objective (Marx's term) property constituted by s real web of
social relations. Market relations make value objective.

Hope this helps.

--Justin




     --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---


   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005