ALB
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Of course new use-values are being produced all the time but they are not being created from nothing, but from materials that originally came from nature. The labour expended in developing a new use-value such as a covid vaccine is part of the socially necessary labour involved in producing it from start to finish. And of course vials containing it are reproducible.
“I cannot see any good reason why the labour theory of value should fail to hold true for new, reproduced amounts of value.
Who says it doesn’t? Except that when a use-value is reproduced its value won’t necessarily be the same as when it was previously produced. This wouldn’t be the case if in the meantime, due to increasing productivity, the amount of socially necessary labour to produce would be less.
The point about a commodity having to be reproducible to be subject to the labour theory of value is precisely this: that the value of a commodity made a few years previously, when the amount of socially necessary labour to produce it was higher but which was not sold, is not that but the current, lower amount of socially necessary labour to produce it.
In other words, the value of a commodity is the amount of socially necessary labour to produce it now and not what it was at the time it was produced, i.e it is the amount of socially necessary labour to reproduce it.
Production doesn’t create anything new. It merely changes the form of materials that originally came from nature. To say that something is reproducible doesn’t mean that the nature-given material from which it is fashioned has to be able to be reproduced (that’s impossible) but that it can be reproduced by using other material that came from nature.
It really is that simple to understand.
In the case of pearls, this doesn’t mean that humans have to be able to make them but that the work of getting them from nature (the bottom of the sea) — which is the productive labour involved in producing them for human use — can be repeated as long as nature produces pearls.
The point of this is that if something cannot be reproduced — such as a particular work of art or land in a particular location — then the labour theory of value does not apply to it, even if it is sold or produced for sale.
Sir Kareer Starmer descends to yet another low:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Danish_European_Union_opt-out_referendum
The warmongers won the Danish referendum but, despite the wall-to-wall pro-Ukraine propaganda, one third of those who voted voted NEJ. I would say that’s a good result. It shows you can’t brainwash all the people all the time.
I wonder what the result would be in other states sending arms to Ukraine to keep the killing and destruction there going.
This has already been done here. This from An ABC of Marxism on this site:
Commodity. Commodities are items of wealth that have been produced for sale. Commodities have been produced in pre-capitalist societies, but such production was marginal. It is only in capitalism that it becomes the dominant mode of production, where goods and services are produced for sale with a view to profit.
Under capitalism the object of commodity production is the realisation of profit when the commodities have been sold. These profits are mostly re-invested and accumulated as capital. Commodities must be capable of being reproduced, and this includes the uniquely capitalist commodity of human labour power. Reading Paresh Chattopadhyay, Socialism and Commodity Production, 2018
Mutual Assured Depression continues:
It’s not that simple. See this article about the interaction in Britain between the minimum wage (paid by employers) and “working tax credits” (paid to employees by the government):
There is a referendum in Denmark tomorrow on whether or not to join the EU defence policy. This should give some measure of popular disagreement with the dominant pro-war narrative.
This might be the sort of referendum in which socialists could vote No?
If that happens then people will decide that the pain involved in trying to save the Ukrainian regime is not worth it and the Tories will be booted out at the first opportunity. And good bye to Borys and Truss, the warmongers who thought that the public would put up with the pain that they inflicted.
Incidentally, I thought the Russian riposte to Truss was amusing;
Interesting observation by the Financial Times;
“American officials have at times been annoyed with the tough talk from UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and foreign secretary Liz Truss, who gave a speech in April calling to push Russia out of “the whole of Ukraine”. They have bristled at British calls for more aid or a more muscular response when the US has been the largest provider and has moved mass amounts of assistance into Ukraine at record speeds. ‘The British are actually a step out in front of the Americans, they keep looking over their shoulder to make sure they are being followed,’ said Jeremy Shapiro, research director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.”
https://www.ft.com/content/315346dc-e1bd-485c-865b-979297f3fcf5
I wasn’t meaning to suggest that “commodity” was a mistranslation of Ware, only that the word Marx chose to translate it into French made it absolutely clear that he was talking about something that was bought and sold and that this is what the English word “commodity” meant for him. “Commodity” was the obvious English translation, as it had been used by Adam Smith and Ricardo. In any event, there is no such English word as a merchandise.
Talking of the French translation of Das Kapital, this was the one translation that Marx himself supervised and saw to print, in 1873. In it the German word Ware is translated as marchandise. Any English-speaker, even with no knowledge of French, can understand straightaway that what is being talked about is something that is bought and sold. In fact in French the primary dictionary meaning of the word is, precisely, “what is sold and bought”.
It is clear, then, that the word “commodity” in the English translations means something that is bought and sold. There can be no argument that this is what Marx meant by the word. A product that is not bought or sold is not a commodity.
There can be arguments about whether Marx’s concept of “value” (as opposed to “exchange-value”) can be applied to everything that is bought and sold and/or under all historical conditions but not about what the word “commodity” meant for Marx. That’s a closed argument.
We now have some more up-to-date figures of the number of times that the QR code was used to directly access a particular “landing page” on our website. Up to yesterday it was 72.
As some 4700 leaflets were distributed in and around the ward, that is 1 in about every 67 leaflets distributed (or about 1 per street). This will be some sort of measure of the number who read the leaflet rather than dump it with all the pizza and other ads that fall through their letter-box.
One peculiarity is that more (41) used the QR after the Election Day than before (31). This suggests perhaps that interest was not directly linked to the election.
The next step will be to distribute a similar number of a similar leaflet over the same period (one month) in a similar area (inner London) when there is no election on.
The area (inner London, Labour Party majority) may have had something to do with the absolute figure, as the Tunbridge leaflet in a different area with a different title and content brought only 4 QR responses from the 2000 leaflets distributed.
Here are some key definitions in basic Marxian economics from An A to Z of Marxismon this site.
Commodity. Commodities are items of wealth that have been produced for sale. Commodities have been produced in pre-capitalist societies, but such production was marginal. It is only in capitalism that it becomes the dominant mode of production, where goods and services are produced for sale with a view to profit.
Under capitalism the object of commodity production is the realisation of profit when the commodities have been sold. These profits are mostly re-invested and accumulated as capital. Commodities must be capable of being reproduced, and this includes the uniquely capitalist commodity of human labour power.
Value. A social relationship between people which expresses itself as a material relationship between things. The value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary abstract labour time needed for its production and reproduction from start to finish. Price is the monetary expression of value in a market.
Exchange value. A relative magnitude which expresses the relationship between two commodities. The proportion in which commodities tend to exchange with each other depends upon the amount of socially necessary labour-time spent in producing and reproducing them from start to finish. Commodities sell at market prices that rise and fall according to market conditions around a point regulated by their value and, more specifically, their price of production.
Prices of production. In Marxian economic theory the ‘price of production’ is the price sufficient to yield the average rate of profit on capital advanced. From a business’s point of view this is cost price plus what the market will bear. Actual market prices fluctuate around prices of production through the equalisation of profit rates.
