Re: [Marxism] From here to there? The Road Forward

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 12/27/03 5:42:17 AM Pacific Standard Time,
clyder@xxxxxxxxxx writes:
No Marx defines value as the 'common factor in the exchange relation, or
in the exchange value of a commodity, is therefore its value. The
progress of the investigation will lead us back to exchange-value as the
necessary more of expression or form of appearance of value

Reply

The character of having value, when once impressed upon products, obtains
fixity only by reason of their acting and reacting upon each other as quantities
of value. These quantities vary continually, independently of the will,
foresight and action of the producers. To them, their own social action takes 
the
form of the action of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled
by them. It requires a fully developed production of commodities before, from
accumulated experience alone, the scientific conviction springs up, that all
the different kinds of private labour, which are carried on independently of
each other, and yet as spontaneously developed branches of the social division 
of
labour, are continually being reduced to the quantitative proportions in
which society requires them. And why? Because, in the midst of all the 
accidental
and ever fluctuating exchange-relations between the products, the labour-time
socially necessary for their production forcibly asserts itself like an
overriding law of Nature. The law of gravity thus asserts itself when a house 
falls
about our ears. [29] The determination of the magnitude of value by
labour-time is therefore a secret, hidden under the apparent fluctuations in the
relative values of commodities. Its discovery, while removing all appearance of 
mere
accidentality from the determination of the magnitude of the values of
products, yet in no way alters the mode in which that determination takes place.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S2


The law of value means the socially necessary amount of labor that goes into
the production of commodities. There are of course disagreements over this
formulation. What is being discussed is the law of value and not value as an
abstraction. The law of value embraces that which defines its field of operation
and underlying impulse.

Melvin P.
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