[OPE-L:5207] Re: Re: Re: use-value as qualitative?

["Gerald_A_Levy" <Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Re Steve K's [5206]:


> (snip, JL) Marx was using use-value in a distinctly
> quantitative way when deriving the
> source of surplus value from the difference
> between the exchange-value and
> the use-value of labor-power.

Marx derived surplus value based on the difference
between what workers were paid in wages (=
to, on average, the value of labor-power) and
the value created by those workers. This does
not require that use-value is quantitative. All it
requires is that there is surplus labor time, and
thereby unpaid labor time, and that surplus labor time comes to take the
value-form. (NB: it ALSO
requires that the product is sold and thereby
has its use-value and value validated so that,
in the circuit M-C-M',  C can be converted into
M').

Use-value, not as quantity but as quality, is
presumed. If the product which was presumed
to have use-value when setting a money price
prior to sale is shown ex post not to have
use-value that it can not then also have value
and exchange-value. I.e. *without this quality
there can be no quantity*. Thus, uv is necessarily
*linked* to quantity even though it is not itself
quantity.

But, I don't think this discussion (at least in terms
of the 2 of us) is advancing. I.e. we seem to be
repeating the same things.  This seems to be based
on different understandings of the nature of
the commodity (which, I believe, is based on
differing methodologies).

In solidarity, Jerry