An Incontestable Argument for the Law of Value
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Are you sure that the term ‘use-value’ stands only for something abstract like the service of a doctor or the performance of a popstar, NOT something like an LED bulb or an apple ?
“Are you sure that the term ‘use-value’ stands only for something abstract like the service of a doctor or the performance of a popstar, NOT something like an LED bulb or an apple ?”
Nobody said that ‘something abstract like the service of a doctor or the performance of a popstar’ was a use-value.
The actual the service of a doctor, or an actual performance of a popstar are examples of concrete labour anyhow, not abstract.
So, you believe that the stuff like ‘labour’ is something ‘concrete’ !!!
How do you think it looks like– like an apple or a pineapple, sir ?
And if you think it’s formless, how much is its mass and how much space does it occupy in your view ?
Concrete labour looks like an actual specific person doing an actual specific task.
Abstract labour is labour considered in a generalised or homogeneous way.
This is very basic.
So, now you claim that the labour by a person looks like that person!!!
Would like to know why you need view something like labour, something abstract in itself, as concrete as the person performing it.
Nevertheless, as I see it, the term use-value stands for both the abstract stuff called the usefulness (in this sense, it’s uncountable always) and the concrete stuff called the commodity (an apple, a building, etc.). The special commodity called labour-power that was discovered by Marx also happens to be an abstract entity the use-value of which is labour, another abstract entity. The use-value meaning a commodity (the labour-power included) is NOT reproducible.
Prakash, you seem to be willfully misunderstanding but I’ll give it one more try.
Labour is ‘concrete’ in that it is an actual activity conducted by actual people, it is also ‘abstract’ in that we can think of it in a generalised / universalised / simple way, separate from the specific concrete instances of it.
Concrete labour produces use-values. Abstract labour is what forms ‘value’.
I’m not, I assure you, ‘willfully misunderstanding’ your point.
I agree that your view of the two sorts of labour harmonizes with Marx’s classification of labour. I seem to be mistaken on this point. Thank you for pointing to it. I must reflect on it.
Nevertheless, I can’t see how this classification of labour leads us to the view that commodities (concrete use-values) are reproducible or the view that the abstract labour contained in the concrete labour that creates concrete use-values meant for self-use, Not exchange, doesn’t create value.
“I can’t see how this classification of labour leads us to the view that commodities (concrete use-values) are reproducible.”
I just think this comes down to how you have been interpreting the word “reproducable”.
We say (for example) a chair is reproducible, we mean that it is something that can be produced by labour, and can be produced by labour again (so long as the materials necessary for its production that are provided by nature can continue to be sourced). *Re*produced just means “produced again”.
It seems implied that you’ve got No good reason for objecting to the refusal by someone to take ‘the word “reproducable”’ in such a sense.
I added another query a few seconds later: how does this classification of labour leads us to the view that the abstract labour contained in the concrete labour that creates concrete use-values meant for self-use, Not exchange, fail to create value?
I think you are going to spend your whole life going back and forward by the meantime the whole world is falling apart
“the abstract labour contained in the concrete labour that creates concrete use-values meant for self-use, Not exchange, fail to create value?”
I am having some difficulty parsing this statement.
“Abstract labour” isn’t contained in “concrete labour”. They are more like the same thing but looked at from different angles. I can perform a specific concrete act of labour, building a brick wall for example, but if I want to compare this act of labour to the labour of a person that makes bread I have to think about ‘labour’ as something more general – labour in the abstract. The way we do this is by reducing all types of labour to an abstract simple labour, to which all types of labour can be reduced and compared.
I think your question is “Why do things made for personal use not contain value?” The answer is because they are not commodities. Goods only become commodities due to the fact that they face each other in the market. It’s this process of market comparison that enables the labour that went into them to take the form of ‘value’. Without a market the labour cannot take the form of ‘value’.
DJP – Things made for personal use may have ‘use value’ but not necessarily ‘exchange value’ whereas commodities must contain both use and exchange value.
“DJP – Things made for personal use may have ‘use value’ but not necessarily ‘exchange value’ whereas commodities must contain both use and exchange value.”
Well yes, obviously. But the distinction also has to be made between ‘exchange value’ (expressed in quantities of other things – a relationship between things) and ‘value’ (an amount of embodied social labour – a relationship between the thing and the producer).
I think it’s a most serious issue which, if we fail to resolve it, is certain to lend credence to the capitalists’ claim that the concept of communism is fundamentally flawed.
‘“Abstract labour” isn’t contained in “concrete labour”. They are more like the same thing but looked at from different angles.’
The abstract labour at issue must be either contained in or inseparably associated with the concrete labour that creates a concrete use-value, the value of which is the product of the abstract labour. The expression like ‘more like’ is useless outright as it doesn’t help resolve any dispute.
As I see it, the concrete labour (‘building a brick wall’) is the form while the abstract labour is its content.“It’s this process of market comparison that enables the labour that went into them to take the form of ‘value’. Without a market the labour cannot take the form of ‘value’.”
I’m afraid the above-quoted argument of yours, if true, inevitably leads to the conclusion that the stuff called value originates during exchange in the market. Labour (abstract) cannot create value unless products of labour (concrete) are bought & sold. Why? What prevents labour really from creating value?
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