ALB
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Your basic thesis seems to be that everything that has a price will be a product of labour and that this demonstrates the validity of Marx’s labour theory of value.
The trouble is that Marx’s theory is a theory about the value of “commodities”, defined as reproducible objects of use produced for sale. His thesis is that (if there was not production for profit) the value of a commodity would be determined by the amount of labour required on average to produce it from start to finish. As, with increasing productivity, the amount of labour required to produce a particular commodity changes (decreases) so would its value, and this would apply to any produced and unsold before the change in value. So the value of a commodity is the amount of labour required on average to reproduce it.
This is why the labour theory of value only applies to useful things produced for sale that can be reproduced. It does not apply to a product of labour, even one produced for sale, that cannot be reproduced, e.g. a painting, a sculpture or other work of art. The price of such a one-off product of labour does not depend on the amount of labour required to produce it. As you say, it depends on the
market demand for the product, its market price. It has no “value” in the sense of the labour theory of value.Some things that are not the product of labour can also have a market price. Marx mentions honour, conscience, etc. Another is “uncultivated land” in the sense of land that has not been transformed by human labour (more likely to be found in the wilderness or on the frontier of human habitation than in the centre of a town). The price even of land that has been transformed by labour does not reflect just that. It is more like a work of art in that it cannot be reproduced. Its place is where it is and its price therefore depends on the market demand for it for the uses to which it can be put.
Nobody is claiming that “an artist of extraordinary skill possesses more talent than a movie maker or an inventor of a life-saving therapy such as the COVID-19 vaccine.” The only claim is that the price individuals can claim for their exceptional ability depends on the market demand for it. It is not, as you point out, a measure of their usefulness to society. It might in fact reflect the distorted priorities of society.
You can call anything that is bought and sold a “commodity” if you like, but the ironic result of this is that you end up with the bourgeois theory that the price of everything sold depends on the market demand for it since this is the one thing they all have in common.
In Clapham East the local branch spent £265 (from its own funds) on 4000 leaflets. The printer delivered nearly 4700. Nine branch members and sympathisers took part in distributing the leaflets, 6 through letter boxes and the others from street stalls.
This is revealing. The Ukrainian regime has clearly ordered their soldiers in the steel plant in Mariupol not to surrender as any other soldiers in the same hopeless situation would have done weeks ago. They are in effect ordering them to die for the “g[l]ory of Ukraine” as this would be good propaganda. Naturally, their families don’t agree and are protesting:
Note too what happened to the men at the protest.
Here is the result for the Clapham East ward of Lambeth council.
Leigh (Lab) 1127
Collins (Lab) 1073
Hattersley (Green) 411
Willians (LD) 224
Freeman (Con) 215
Hindson (Con) 193
Cranney (TUSC) 38
Lambert (Soc) 31As electors had 2 votes the way to calculate the percentage is to compare votes with the 1744 ballot papers returned. 31 is 1.8 percent of this.
Turnout was 23 percent.
RESULT FTOM TUNBRIDGE WELLS
Pantiles & St Mark’s Ward
Gavin Barras (Liberal Democrats) 1386 58% Elected
Dogan Delman (Conservatives) 715 30% Not elected
John Anthony Hurst (Green Party) 132 6% Not elected
Lorna Blackmore (Labour) 130 5% Not elected
Shannon Phineas Trahern Kennedy (The Socialist Party (GB)) 11 0.46% Not elected
Voting Summary
Seats 1
Total votes 2374
Electorate 5264
Number of ballot papers rejected 12Alan, did you see this from your favourite Pope?
https://news.yahoo.com/pope-francis-suggests-apos-barking-221515078.html
The same sort of question can be asked about Germany, France, Italy and Britain: How long will the voters there be prepared to put up with the consequences of sanctions and increased arms spending on their cost and standard of living? Will they force their governments to adopt a less war-mongering approach?
I don’t think that ordinary people are as much in favour of prolonging the war, by pumping in more arms, as the governments are.
Lavrov was talking bollocks and has apparenty been disowned by his boss:
None of the so-called BRICS countries, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — singled out as ripe for development to the next capitalist stage — are supporting the NATO war with Russia. Nor are any of the others imposing sanctions on Russia. I don’t suppose they will be happy with the US, the EU and Japan for plunging, through their sanctions, the world economy into a slump.
Yes, despite what both sides are saying, it really is a war between NATO and Russia.
Meanwhile, on the economic front, both sides are pursuing Mutual Assured Depression. It’s mad even from a capitalist point of view.
Marx also goes into the semantics of the word “value” in a footnote in the first few pages of Capital:
“‘The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or serve the conveniencies of human life.’ (John Locke, “Some Considerations on the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest, 1691,” in Works Edit. Lond., 1777, Vol. II., p. 28.) In English writers of the 17th century we frequently find ‘worth’ in the sense of value in use, and ‘value’ in the sense of exchange value. This is quite in accordance with the spirit of a language that likes to use a Teutonic word for the actual thing, and a Romance word for its reflexion.”
Since then of course “worth” has come to be used to mean “value for money” not how useful something is.
Abenezer, you’ve been reading the Daily Wail again !
The two stories you highlight don’t bear the interpretation you put on them.
The Russian equivalent of the Mail is not saying that there are occult forces at work but claiming that some Ukrainian soldiers think there are.
The same with the story about Sweden. The bus stop ads are not saying that Sweden is a Nazi state but that some famous Swedes were Nazi sympathisers.
No doubt the Russian media are portraying the war in Ukraine as a struggle between Good and Evil but they are not the only ones.
If you want a really detailed discussion of the various meanings and etymology of the word “value” or, rather, of its equivalent in German Wert the thing to read is the notes Marx wrote in 1881 on a book by a man called Adolph Wagner:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/01/wagner.htm
Here is an example:
“What annoys (shocks) Mr. Wagner about my presentation, though, is that I will not do him the favour of complying with the patriotic German professorial “striving” for confusing use-value with value. (…). He says:
“In harmony with the view of Rodbertus and also of Schäffle I place the use-value character of all value in the fore, and emphasise the assessment of use-value all the more, since the assessment of exchange-value is simply not applicable to many of the most important economic goods,”
The only thing which clearly lies at the bottom of the German stupidity is the fact that linguistically the words value [Wert] or worth [Würde] were first applied to the useful things themselves, which existed for a long time, even as “products of labour,” before becoming commodities. (…)
As the commodity is bought by the purchaser not because it has value but because it is a “use-value,” and is used for definite purposes, it goes without saying that 1. use-values are “assessed,” i.e. their quality is investigated (just as their quantity is weighed, measured, etc.); 2. if different sorts of commodities can be substituted for one another for the same use, one or the other will be given preference, etc., etc.
In Gothic there is only one word for Wert and Würde: vairths, τιμη, τιμαω, assess, i.e. evaluate; to determine the price or value, to rate; metaphorically: to appreciate, esteem, honour, distinguish. (…)
Wert and Würde [value and worth] are thus closely related in both etymology and meaning. What conceals the fact is the inorganic (incorrect) inflexion of Wert which has become customary in Modern High German: Werth, Werthes instead of Werdes, since Gothic th corresponds to High German d, not th = t, and this is indeed still the case in Middle High German (wert, gen. Werdes, loc. cit.). According to the rule in Middle High German, d at the end of a word became t, giving wert instead of werd, but genitive Werdes.
But all this has as much or as little to do with the economic category “value” as with the chemical valency of the chemical elements (atomicity) or with the chemical equivalents or equal values (combining weights of the chemical elements).
Furthermore it should be noted that — even in this linguistic connection — if it follows automatically, as if by the nature of the thing, from the original identity of Würde and Wert that this word also referred to things, products of labour in their natural form — it was later directly applied unchanged to prices, i.e. value in its developed value-form, i.e. exchange-value, which has so little to do with the matter that the same word continued to be used for worth in general, for honorary offices, etc. Thus, linguistically speaking, there is no distinction here between use-value and value.“
Good luck ! In English this sort of discussion is more complicated as the meaning and etymology of two different words are involved — “value” and “worth”. Actually three different words as the word “commodity” is also linked linguistically with the idea of being useful . . .
I hadn’t realised that the founder of IKEA (after whose initials the firm is named) was a Nazi in its youth. But it seems that he was:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingvar_Kamprad
You learn something new every day.
Another proof that the Labour Party is politically bankrupt. From today’s Times:
“Sir Kier Starmer has suggested that he will expel Labour MPs who do not voice ‘unshakeable support for Nato.’ The Labour leader said he was ‘very clear’ that support for the military alliance is ‘the root of the Labour Party’.”
His next move, as he subordinates everything else to furthering the political careers of himself and the rest of his gang of place-hunters, must be to change his name. The man he is named after, Kier Hardie, was not a socialist but at least he didn’t think that the root of a party claiming to represent “Labour” was support for a military alliance.
What a despicable creature he is.
