Surely Marx did not say either what Justin or Rakesh claim. Rakesh' claim (re Marx) is correct about value in EXCHANGE but does not apply to use value. Air and sunlight etc. are valuable even if not involved in any exchange relationship and their use value is quite independent of labor.
Cheers, Ken Hanly Marx's understanding of that distinction has to be modified? > > > > > I think that Roemer's version loses a lot of the point of Marx's > >socological analysis, which, as I say, can be maintained without > >holding that labor creates all value > > Justin, Marx does not say that. He says that *abstract, general > social* labor creates all value. Value as expressed in the exchange > value of a commodity does not derive from the subjective or > *personal* estimation of the toil and trouble involved in its > production. Value does not derive from the useful qualities of the > commodity that derive from the *concrete* labor that went into its > making. The value of the commodity is not related to the time > individual producers put into their making but rather the time > socially necessary to reproduce that commodity. The value of a > commodity is a represenation of some aliquot of the social labor time > upon which divided in some form any and all societies depend. It is > not personal, subjective and concrete labor time that is connected > with the value of a commodity. > >
