-- on 7 Jun 2006, at 21:25, Gil Skillman wrote:
... according to Marx, labor embodied in a commodity is not of itself sufficient for that commodity to have value. It must also be demanded. Thus, just as in the neoclassical approach to scarcity, Marx's is not *strictly* a production-side theory of value.
This is easily overlooked. I for one am grateful for the clarification. To quote Marx in context, "A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use values, but use values for others, social use values. (And not only for others, without more. The mediaeval peasant produced quit-rent-corn for his feudal lord and tithe-corn for his parson. But neither the quit-rent-corn nor the tithe-corn became commodities by reason of the fact that they had been produced for others. To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange.) Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value." (Capital Vol. I, end of Section 1, Chapter 1) Note the importance of the closing two sentences. Comradely, Marc ___________________________________________________________ Try the all-new Yahoo! Mail. "The New Version is radically easier to use" The Wall Street Journal http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html
