Re: (OPE-L) is value labour?

[Claus Magno <cmgermer@xxxxxxx>]

Paul Zarembka, May 07, 2003 6:17 PM:

> I find two phrases of your sentences contradictory: "the substance of
value
> is abstract labour, i.e., the expenditure of human productive effort
> irrespective of its concrete form" compared to "value is objectified
> labour".  Agreeing with the former, I don't understand how, then,
'abstract
> labor' could be 'objectified labor'.

Imo there is no contradiction. A commodity is the natural form of a certain
kind of labour (concrete or useful) and a certain quantity of it
(abstract) - use-value and value. Thus, each commodity is a particular form
of value, i.e. as value it is the objectification of a certain amount of
labour in the abstract. On the other hand, abstract labour, the substance of
value, can be conceived both as the activity and the result. As an activity
it creates value but is not value. It is value in the form of its result,
which is the commodity. Thus, it seems to me that one can say that either
the commodity or its value are objectified labour, because in its quality of
value the commodity *is* labour. In ch. 5 of Capital I Marx says that
"definite quantities of product ... represent nothing but definite
quantities of labour, definite masses of crystallized labour time. They are
nothing more than the materialization of so many hours or so many days of
social labour".

Claus.

>
> Paul
>
> ***********************************************************************
> "Confronting 9-11, Ideologies of Race, and Eminent Economists", Vol. 20
> RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY,  Paul Zarembka, editor, Elsevier Science
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