A summary for baby Marxists like me (please correct me if I understood something wrong, professor): • *Good* = Any physical object with a social use. • *Commodity* = Any good produced to be exchanged in the market. 1• *Value* = Necessary labour time required to produce a certain *good* under a certain social context. Relative to technical/environmental constrains of the society where the *good* is produced. Measured in time units. Can't be abolished (unless it could be created instantly with no imputs). 2• *Use value* = Physical property of a certain *good* which could allow to satisfy a certain need with it under a certain social context. Objective, independient of social context. Measured in physical quantities (mass, volume, length...) of the specific *good.* Can't be abolished (unless it looses its physical properties). 3• *Exchange value* = Proportion in which a certain commodity is required to be traded with another commodity in order to make them equivalent in exchange under a certain social context. Relative to both its correlative (1•) *value* and the particular market conditions (supply and demand) of the particular short-term social context. Measured in units of another *good* (most commonly, money). Can be abolished in communism (through direct calculation in kind and direct personal/social consumption). 4• *Value form* = Expression that takes a certain (1•) *value* when exchanged. Equal to the (3•) *exchange value* in capitalist societies. Can be abolished in communism. 5• *Price* = Monetary instantaneous expression of (3•) *exchange value* in a certain social context. Equal to the (3•) *exchange value* in capitalist societies. Measured in money. Can be abolished in communism.
No, Reader Cockshott's answers are not entirely correct from my point of view: * Commodity A product of labor only becomes a commodity when it becomes a use value for others through exchange. This means that a product of labor can only be qualified as a commodity on the market, because it is only known there whether the labor expended on the product was socially (i.e. for others) useful or not. About the commodities (this is where the other terms come from): Marx, Karl (2015) Capital I, Progress Publishers, Moscow p. 30 “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.)” * Value Interpreting value as the necessary labor time expended under certain conditions does not work. What should be necessary under certain conditions? * Exchange value There can be no difference between value (labour value or commodity value). Value is a social relationship that is formed between people and only works between people, value specifically between exchange partners. In addition to the value that both exchange partners form with each other through the exchange, there is no other value, because they exchange for this one. * Price Price is not clear. There are two economically relevant prices: 1) Offer price This reflects the expected value of the entrepreneur for his work product. 2) Purchase price or selling price This reflects the real value that is only formed on the market.
@@rainerlippert We don't disagree on the concept of commodity. If you could clarify which is your concern with the definition I gave of "commodity", I'm welcome to discuss it. On the concept of value, necessary labour time is the labour time required, given a certain level of development of the forces of production in a society, at the quickiest generalized productive method in that society, in order to produce the corresponding use value. For example, in a society where the best production method allows producing 1kg of coal in usually 4 hours of labour time under normal conditions, any extra time used by another production method would be rendered as socially needless and, thus, valueless (as the coal produced by this method will be realized in the market at the same exchange value as the one with the quickier 4-hour method). On exchange value, there can (and there is) a difference between the time one normally requires to produce something (labour value), and the proportion in which such thing is traded with other things (exchange value). Both concepts are correlated, being the latter derived from the former, but they're essentially different concepts. Finally, _"offer price"_ doesn't exist in any materialist sense. I can expect to sell a product for any quantity I can fantasize, but that doesn't mean anything from the perspective of the price it will actually finally sell. The only relevant price for a scientific theory of value is the market price, not any subjective "price" the seller creates in their mind.
@@Ajente02 Part 1/3 Many thanks for the answer! It is quite clear that when we discuss value here with Mr Cockshott, we have different opinions. * term “goods” - Quote “Any good produced to be exchanged in the market” According to Marx's view and my view, a produced good only becomes a commodity when it becomes a use value for others through exchange (!). Only with the exchange is the social usefulness of the work expended for this recognized and thus also its value-creating character. Before the exchange, such a product is merely a potential commodity to which an expected value is assigned. I inserted the relevant quote from Marx in my previous comment. * Term "Necessary labour time" "Socially necessary labour time" means "socially necessary labour time on average". This cannot be calculated from production data. * Example: An entrepreneur manufactures navigation devices. For a piece of equipment he has proportional costs of constant capital (buildings, ancillary products, electricity, communication, with Marx also machines) of c = £100. Its cost for labor (only human for Marx) is v = £100. He estimates that he could currently get a surplus value of s= £50 with such a device. So he adds this to the cost c + v and gets the expected value for his product of £250, which he makes visible to potential buyers as an asking price of £250. ** Inset expected value Note: All prices for products in department stores are asking prices that reflect expected values. It is not certain whether the corresponding products will be bought at these expected values, and if they are bought, only market activities will determine whether all products are bought at this expected value. If the entrepreneur estimates that the sale is not going well and he lowers the price, he lowers the expected value, which is reflected in a changed asking price. It's clearer in the bazaar. There, a specified price is expected as an offer price anyway. ** Example - first sale He sells 100 of this navigation device to the “Jupiter” retail chain. In the negotiations he manages to achieve the expected surplus value of s = £50. This determines the necessary working hours. At this point, a distinction must be made as to how this is calculated. a) According to Marx the surplus value is produced exclusively by the living labor v. At an average company worker value of £50 per hour, 2 human workers worked 1 hour each on such a device. The buyer (Jupiter chain) pays £50 surplus value, so the entrepreneur only has to pay 1 worker for an hour. An hour is unpaid for the entrepreneur, but not for the second worker, because he is paid for this hour by the buyer. The entrepreneur keeps this £50 for himself, which Marx identified as capitalist exploitation. By purchasing 100 devices, the necessary working time for these 100 devices is halved from 2 hours to 1 hour. The 2nd hour is the so-called unpaid or overtime, i.e. the overtime or unpaid labour time is 1 hour. It follows that for these 100 devices the average working time required is 1 hour. If these are the only devices of their kind, that would also be the socially average necessary working time for these devices. b) In my opinion the surplus value is not only generated by the human workforce, but also by the machines etc. However, that is another topic and will not be discussed here. But in this case the added value would be divided pro rata between the costs involved: £25 or ½ hour in human labor and £25 in constant capital (at the same cost share), or ½ hour. By purchasing 100 devices, the necessary working time for these 100 devices is halved from 2 hours to 1 hour. The 2nd hour is the so-called unpaid labour time or overtime, i.e. the overtime is 1 hour.
@@Ajente02 Part 2/3 It follows that for these 100 devices the average labour time required is 1 hour. If these are the only devices of their kind, that would also be the socially average necessary labour time for these devices. b) In my opinion the surplus value is not only generated by the human workforce, but also by the machines etc. However, that is another topic and will not be discussed here. But in this case the surplus value would be divided pro rata between the costs involved: £25 or ½ hour in human labor and £25 in constant capital (at the same cost share), or ½ hour. ** Example - second sale The entrepreneur does not succeed in selling 100 devices to the second retail chain "Multimediamarkt". He can only sell 50. His wish to achieve £100 surplus value per device cannot be fulfilled. He can only negotiate £60. I leave the calculation here on Marx's explanations. This results in a different necessary labour time for each piece of equipment: the entrepreneur has to pay £40 for the human labour, and the buyer pays £60. The necessary labour time for these devices is therefore only 0.8 hours and the unpaid labour time is therefore 1.2 hours. If these are all the devices produced, then the average socially necessary labour time can be calculated as follows: 100 x 1 hour + 50 x 0.8 hours = 100 hours + 40 hours = 140 hours. The average overtime is 100 x 1 hour + 50 x 1.2 hours = 100 hours + 60 hours. Note: The socially necessary labour time cannot be calculated on the basis of the production costs, because firstly there is no socially necessary labour time on the production side, since everything is private work in the private sphere of the entrepreneur and secondly, the unpaid labour is not yet certain. The surplus labor can only be calculated after the products have been sold on the market and only then can the socially necessary labour time be calculated. Addition: This example can be expanded to include other production sites for the same device type, other cost distributions for c and v, and other surplus value achieved. * On labor value and exchange value The labor value according to Marx is a subjective value, because it is a one-sided expected value fixed on the production side of commodity society. The example above shows that. On the production side of commodity society there is still no surplus value. Only a buyer on the market can pay for the surplus value. On the production side, only an surplus value to be achieved or an expected surplus value can be estimated. Marx describes the formation of value with his value formula (Capital III): W = c + v + s. He applies this formula to the production side of commodity society, because that is where the costs c + v arise. In addition, the market has no meaning for him in terms of value creation. But there is still no surplus value on the production side. Surplus value can only be paid by a buyer on the market. Even if the entrepreneur in the example above without selling the devices for the 150 devices Would get handed down £7,500 (£50 per device) out of the sky, that would not be an surplus value, because this money would initially reimburse part of the costs. However, for real surplus value, the cost must be fully recovered! Since the surplus value is part of the value, there can only be one expected value on the production side. Marx's value formula needs to be adjusted accordingly: W|expected = c|cost factor, replacement expected + v|cost factor, replacement expected + s|expected. This expected value is not a real one. According to Marx, real value is formed in exchange on the market when the product of labour becomes a use value for others. Marx's value formula must also be adapted for the market: W|real = c|cost replacing + v|cost replacing + s|real. The real value can only be calculated once it is established whether the buyer is paying surplus value and, if so, how much. With this formula it becomes clear that the value is not formed by the expenses, but by the reimbursement of the expenses and the real surplus value payment. That's logical too! What value would a value formed from expenses have? An entrepreneur could buy the most expensive materials, workforces, etc. and assemble expensive products, e.g. £50-Million- yachts, which nobody would buy.
Now this is getting interesting. Superb development, but I believe we should not rely so much on textual interpretation of Marx's writtings. The structural organization of the concepts commodity, use value, value, exchange value, value substance, price etc. is too varied among interpreters and many of them are consistent with Marx's text. The ambiguity in Marx's work here is real.
In debates with marginalists, how should we differentiate our understanding of use-value from utility, and how should we describe the relationship between value and use-value? I could foresee an semantic objection from marginalizes that our definition of value seems self-defining if value (SNLT) is one thing but value in use another.
Labour time can be measured. You can compute the total labour used by each industry - direct and indirect - and then compare this with the exchange value of the industry's output. Do that accross all industries in a country and you find a very close correlation, typically > 96% correlation. There is no analogous test that can be done on the theory of marginal utility.
This presentation is excellent, but the value form people will say that the 'abstract' in 'socially abstract necessary labor time' is abstracted through the exchange relationship, and they are right. What you are saying is that there are two processes of abstraction, one is a laborer moving from one kind of concrete labor to another and the other is the identification of coat making labor and linen making labor in the exchange of a coat for 20 yards of linen. I think you solve this paradox beautifully by pointing out, as Marx does in the letter to Kugelmann, that abstract labor time (in the value form people's sense) cannot diverge too far from clock time labor or society ceases to reporduce itself. Nonetheless, I would have appreciated if you had addressed the process of abstraction more head on, because that is where the value form theorists are going to point.
That is not what abstract means in this context. The conditions for this abstraction to occur depend on market exchange, but the abstraction itself is in the fact that all commodities are produced by a homogenous expenditure of human laboring capacity, confusing the conditions for the actual property, itself is a similar problem to the conflation of value form and value.
I was always under the impression that Exchange Value is the labor crystalized in the commodity, while price is the monetary expression of value, something totally distinct. And that price varies over time, because of supply and demand, but value only changes after changes to production. Which is also what seems to be the case when I read Value, Price and Profit: "So far the market price of a commodity coincides with its value. On the other hand, the oscillations of market prices, rising now over, sinking now under the value or natural price, depend upon the fluctuations of supply and demand."
there are three types of value to distinguish from use value: concrete, non-quantifiable labour value: abstract, measured in average labour time exchange value: abstract, measured in whatever something is exchanged in if the exchange value is measured in money, it's called price unfortunately, all of this is obscured by the fact, that marx occasionally calls both labour value and exchange value just "value" and it's up to you to guess what he means
@@symbolsarenotreality4595 no. remember the example with 20 yards of linen equaling one coat. exchange value existed even before money was invented. it takes the form of whatever some commodity is exchanged for. only nowadays it pretty much always takes the form of money
🤓 I think we could streamline discussions if we started referring to the value of the crystalized labor as the commodity's _cost_ (ideally expressed in hours), then refer to the value demanded by the merchant as the _price._ Then leave it to the merchant to explain why those values differ. 😜
So, is it accurate to say that the reason that signal channel between value substance and form is noisy because of the anarchic conditions of production under capitalism (private property + equivalent exchange)? And would it also be true to say that an economy that accurately measures value must be one that is well organized and based on cooperation instead of competition? I’m trying to make sure I understand the causal reason behind the noise, I struggle with the maths admittedly
Mr Cockshott, i have read your Book Toward a new Socialism, where you discribed (using british statistics) how inequal the society is, and that you could - double wages - for the most people if there would be a GDP distribution whitout profit. May you do the math again with statistics from today? I am a big fan of exact numbers. How many more you could redistribute in the contemporary (way more inequal) society?
In the US, corporate profits are up to about two trillion dollars a quarter, or eight trillion a year. That's about $64,000 per worker, or $25,000 per citizen, going to shareholders instead. 🥀
I might be confused, perhaps indicate where you think I am erring: I feel like, especially regards the final sections, the '*socially necessary*' aspect is being occluded. I.e. value concerns 'socially necessary' labour-time; and I take this not to mean only the relative average physical/technical conditions of labour, but of those necessary to produce/reproduce commodities necessary to reproduce/produce the MoP and LP necessary for capital to reproduce and expand. Emphasizing only the centrifugal force of average technical conditions of labour appears to me to either move to an almost adapted physiocratic argument. This seems important as regards price. Insofar that 'supply and demand' regulates prices, is this not simply another way of saying price signals are (tumultuously) determining what is socially necessary for the reproduction of private capital: both as a matter of reproducing the necessary labour force, and necessary means of production (and no further)? In this sense, transcending capitalism is not merely about eliminating bosses, or even ending exploitation as such. It is about ending the organization of all human labour within the limits of realizing an abstraction (surplus labour-time), or its social form (money). This further seems important as regards imagining how value (which I agree cannot be abolished, as such) might operate differently under different social conditions. To escape, for example, phenomenal social contradictions like technical advance and reductions in necessary labour-time (which might otherwise result in more stuff/less necessary working time) resulting in unemployment.
when I was learning all this I was constantly confused by which terms refer to human society in general and are meant at being Marx's explication of the nature of human society for the purposes of communist criticism; and which terms applied specifically to a capitalist society and were meant to reveal the nature and contradictions of capitalism.
Stalin explained that there are capital goods, for example, where you simply don't know how long it will take for them to "pay for themselves." One does not even know how long it will take to develop them. He said, in effect, "For the individual capitalist, it makes no sense to invest a lot of money in something that will not yield profits for 20 years, if ever. That the law of value has no regulating influence may be true for essential goods like housing and food, but it makes no sense to run a large swimming pool if it is only used by 5 people a day. Certainly, experience with detailed cost accounting was lacking at the time.
Far be it for me to critique centuries of economic thought I barely understand but I really wish we didn't have to use the same word to refer to so many different things
Quick question, when it comes to volume II of capital proving that the proportionality between prices and values is what causes capitalist reproduction to occur, would that imply that if prices and values weren't proportional to one another then a sort of crisis would happen so that the capitalist class would be unable to reproduce itself?
@@paulcockshott8733 Probably Unlearning Economics. He did a video recently on value and cited the Bichler and Nitzan paper. The suspicion is that he is a follower of their Capital as Power "school" that rejects class struggle.
How does CaP reject class struggle? How does pointing out that a gun or monopoly (capital) has a lot of power which is used to extract profits reject class struggle?
Take the concrete example I gave from June this year when gas producers were forced to sell gas at 5p a therm. Was gas 'valueless junk' that day, or did the price fall below its value? The point is that in Marxist, and indeed classical, economics price is distinct from value. Price can be above or below value, but that is due to temporary shortfalls or excess respectively of supply over demand. You are confusing value with exchange value.
Is the particular reason why that particular commodity is unable to be realised into the market a permanent one, or a temporal one? If it's a permanent one (ex.: the commodity is destroyed, or is lost in an unreachable place like a shipwrek), then it indeed turns into valueless junk. If it's a temporal one (ex.: an economic crisis, or a bad marketing performance), it's only "valueless junk" meanwhile/until it can be sold again. So it means that, as long as the commodity retains its 'commodity' property (it is, it's avaliable to be exchanged into the market), it retains its exchange value; however, as long as it still exist in a social space (it is, it's not destroyed or unreachable to human interaction), it never looses its value.
What exactly do you if you mean by saying "if can think you abolish the law of value" . I mean the argument he has is that given things have a cost of production which usually translate to their market price. However in a socialist system of economy because things are governed by social needs you can shift the end price point of various things by a system of cross subsidies, hence we can make X product cheap and Y product expensive. By doing such hence if you want to lower the price of bread or transportation you subsided the price difference between its value and what it would cost in a market economy. So say bread is 5 GBP, price target is 2 GBP, in a socialist planned economy if the social need for bread is high you fill the cap by giving that industry the missing 3 GBP it would if sold directly at its average price (approx to value). The rightist in the party wanted to abolish this system and make things for social need be paid at their value, which would make things really expensive in some places. Stalin fought against this but they won and eventually made it so the end price was sold a it's value. Which is what you do not want. As long the enterprises and central planning are keeping track of the real value of things, and the prices offsef they're creating by the system of cross subsidy then all is good.
The issue is (and I think you can agree here) these subsidies are temporal and circumstantial, they do not "abolish" the law of value. Even if you can make certain necessary goods more affordable with them, they could also carry the counter effect of making them more scarce (as the subsidy doesn't eliminate the technical/environmental constraints that make the good more expensive to begin with, so its reproduction level would still be slower than the consumption level of the population). Law of value can only be "abolished" ("extinguished" would be more precise, just like Engels pointed with the state) once the production capacity of a certain good has adquired post-scarcity levels (it is, once its reproduction level surpasses its consumption levels).
@@Ajente02 Exactly. If the state wants to lower the price of bread, the answer is to provide free ovens to bakers, not subsidize each loaf they bake. ✊
Thank you for this video! It encourages discussion! From my point of view, the term value should be explained differently than in this video, i.e. there is something wrong with Marx's depiction of value. Marx himself also contradicts himself in explaining value. There is no difference between value and exchange value. Marx defines this difference because he assumes a value that is created with production. But no value is created with production - that's what Marx also says: only socially useful work creates value. If a paid journeyman of a master made a desk for his master during working hours, then he carried out this work in the master's private area. This work was not socially useful and therefore did not create value. The master is very happy about his desk. Due to an unforeseen event, he urgently needs money and wants to sell the desk. According to Marx, he estimates his expenses for the selling price: c = £100, v = £300, i.e. his costs for the desk amounted to £400 pro rata. But as a master craftsman, he wants to earn more from the sale of the desk than it cost him to make it. He estimates he can currently earn a surplus value of s = £100 (the desk looks very nice). So he comes up with an expected value of £500. He makes this visible as an offer price for potential buyers. If no buyer is found, the status of the work expended on that table will not change - it remains private. However, if a buyer is found who fully reimburses the costs and also pays the expected surplus value, then the value of £500 is formed with the exchange, i.e. on the market. This is real value in the economic sense and, according to Marx, also exchange value. Value is a social relationship. Such is only formed between people and it only works between people. In this case, that ratio is in relation to £500, not £450, nor £550. With the exchange, the value is assigned both to the product (here the desk), which becomes a commodity with the exchange according to Marx, and to the value equivalent (here £500). There are no hidden value shares between the exchange partners. According to Marx, a product of labor only becomes a commodity when it becomes a use value for others through exchange. Only then can the work expended on it be described as socially useful and thus value-creating. But that only happens on the market.
Your example doesn't invalide Marx's distinction between value and exchange value. You're just commenting on the transition from petty artisan production in the domestic economy (self-consumption in the private sphere) to the market exonomy (social consumption in the public sphere), which is very sporadic and doesn't affect the general behavior of the social relations. The privately-made desk for self-consumption still had a value (the labour time it took to made), even if/when it was unsuited for exchange in form of a commodity. Of course, this value is only realised (in the form of echange value) in the exchange process, but even before that, with the production process, it already exists as a value (even if just in a potential form). Also, one must remember, the domestic economy is also socially useful.
@@symbolsarenotreality4595 Yes. Aristotle already spoke of it, as did Ricardo, A. Smith and many others. Value has a general meaning, is not just a symbol for something subjective or similar. Marx defined exchange value because he realized that his "labour value" was not used in the market. On the one hand, Marx assumes that value is created with production; on the other hand, he expects goods to be exchanged at equivalent value. But he noted that no one trades based on his "labor value." So he constructed an additional value, the exchange value, which should be different from the labor or commodity value. However, he failed to notice that even according to his explanations in Capital, his "labor value" is not a real value, but only an expected value. Real value and exchange value are the same.
@@Ajente02 2022-11-28 Many thanks for the answer! However, this does not agree with Marx either: Marx distinguishes between private and socially useful work. The apprentice does private work for his master, i.e. he does not sell what he makes for his master to him - the product is in the master's private area from the start. In this area, work does not count as socially useful - economics is not about ideal usefulness, but only about usefulness in the economic sense, i.e. the products of work must be exchanged so that the work expended on them can be qualified as socially useful: * * * Capital I, p. 30 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.)12 * * * To remove any doubt, let's change the example: the table is built by the master's son, without any thought of replacement. The master does not pay the son to work either. Then it is 100% that the work done is private work - no value is formed related to this desktop.
@@rainerlippert "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." I think you misunderstand Marx here. The intent of the worker at the time of production doesn't dictate whether the product can later be declared a commodity, even if his language here seems to imply it. Rather, this is determined simply by its use values _for others._ "Commodity" is one of the many use values for a table, even if it's not the use it's put to first. "Gift for my master" is another. How something is used doesn't affect its value, assuming it's not destroyed in the process or whatever. The table's underlying "value" (i.e. cost) remains the same, however the worker/master/customer make use of it, and Marx measures that value in the minutes spent in its production, then proposes such valuation be reestablished as the basis for exchange. ✊
For those interested in a discussion: Under @Ajente002's comment, the classic interpretations of the LTV were increased Goods, socially necessary working time, value and exchange value reaffirmed. In my view, however, these terms cannot be explained so clearly.
Value isn't broad. What do you value? There you go! You people argue over terms of your own invention like Christians arguing over the trinity. Irrelevant.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 Clearly someone who doesn't understand the relevance of debate to discover truth. As scientist these debates are relevant just because you're un intellectuals and like to think that by not speaking about things we discover things by ignorance just shows you generally appeal ignorance as your basis of thought and thus are a ally of religion in that respect. While we do the very opposite.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 what you posted is just nonsense, value is a specific classical economic term and this is why economists or ppl interested talk about it.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 What a load of absolute sophist gibberish. The term value itself is broad/general and has multiple contexts. Exchange value is a specific context.
@@felixii4931 wtf are you blabbering about? Value is a general term that does not just apply to economics. Exchange value is a specific context of value in regard to monetary economics.
Marx says that average price is a good approximate of value. Additionally I mean on Wikipedia page of the thinking is quiet different and the Wikipedia page is result of many peoples thoughts so for them to converge on this suggests that there are competing definitions. Additionally if you read any Marx where his says value and swap exchange value in his word usage the function of the flow English remains the same however. Try replacing exchange value with prices and you'd get nonsense on par with classical economist confusion of these terms.
@@organiccomposition Just because they didn't consciously measured (or even conceptualized) labour time doesn't mean they weren't conscious of its existence. Even animals are conscious of the passing of time! If you read on how hunter-gather made barter, you'll see they subconsciously exchanged equal values of goods (it is, they bartered goods which took them equal time to obtain/make, under normal conditions).
I would have disagree with this because exchange value does equal value. You're talking about price of exchange price. Marx talked about the confusion of classical economists with average price, price and value. You're doing that by making exchange value equals price. It's not exchange value is value. Price is what the form that reflects it.
Price is the exchange value in terms of the money commodity. In practice nobody bothers with exchange values in terms of anything else except in the currency markets. Value is the attractor of prices, that is to say of exchange values, but day to day prices, and thus exchange values, diverge from values so value is not equal to exchange value.
A summary for baby Marxists like me (please correct me if I understood something wrong, professor):
• *Good* = Any physical object with a social use.
• *Commodity* = Any good produced to be exchanged in the market.
1• *Value* = Necessary labour time required to produce a certain *good* under a certain social context.
Relative to technical/environmental constrains of the society where the *good* is produced.
Measured in time units.
Can't be abolished (unless it could be created instantly with no imputs).
2• *Use value* = Physical property of a certain *good* which could allow to satisfy a certain need with it under a certain social context.
Objective, independient of social context.
Measured in physical quantities (mass, volume, length...) of the specific *good.*
Can't be abolished (unless it looses its physical properties).
3• *Exchange value* = Proportion in which a certain commodity is required to be traded with another commodity in order to make them equivalent in exchange under a certain social context.
Relative to both its correlative (1•) *value* and the particular market conditions (supply and demand) of the particular short-term social context.
Measured in units of another *good* (most commonly, money).
Can be abolished in communism (through direct calculation in kind and direct personal/social consumption).
4• *Value form* = Expression that takes a certain (1•) *value* when exchanged.
Equal to the (3•) *exchange value* in capitalist societies.
Can be abolished in communism.
5• *Price* = Monetary instantaneous expression of (3•) *exchange value* in a certain social context.
Equal to the (3•) *exchange value* in capitalist societies.
Measured in money.
Can be abolished in communism.
That corresponds exactly with my understanding of Marxist economic theory.
No, Reader Cockshott's answers are not entirely correct from my point of view:
* Commodity
A product of labor only becomes a commodity when it becomes a use value for others through exchange.
This means that a product of labor can only be qualified as a commodity on the market, because it is only known there whether the labor expended on the product was socially (i.e. for others) useful or not.
About the commodities (this is where the other terms come from):
Marx, Karl (2015) Capital I, Progress Publishers, Moscow
p. 30
“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.)”
* Value
Interpreting value as the necessary labor time expended under certain conditions does not work.
What should be necessary under certain conditions?
* Exchange value
There can be no difference between value (labour value or commodity value).
Value is a social relationship that is formed between people and only works between people, value specifically between exchange partners.
In addition to the value that both exchange partners form with each other through the exchange, there is no other value, because they exchange for this one.
* Price
Price is not clear. There are two economically relevant prices:
1) Offer price
This reflects the expected value of the entrepreneur for his work product.
2) Purchase price or selling price
This reflects the real value that is only formed on the market.
@@rainerlippert We don't disagree on the concept of commodity. If you could clarify which is your concern with the definition I gave of "commodity", I'm welcome to discuss it.
On the concept of value, necessary labour time is the labour time required, given a certain level of development of the forces of production in a society, at the quickiest generalized productive method in that society, in order to produce the corresponding use value. For example, in a society where the best production method allows producing 1kg of coal in usually 4 hours of labour time under normal conditions, any extra time used by another production method would be rendered as socially needless and, thus, valueless (as the coal produced by this method will be realized in the market at the same exchange value as the one with the quickier 4-hour method).
On exchange value, there can (and there is) a difference between the time one normally requires to produce something (labour value), and the proportion in which such thing is traded with other things (exchange value). Both concepts are correlated, being the latter derived from the former, but they're essentially different concepts.
Finally, _"offer price"_ doesn't exist in any materialist sense. I can expect to sell a product for any quantity I can fantasize, but that doesn't mean anything from the perspective of the price it will actually finally sell. The only relevant price for a scientific theory of value is the market price, not any subjective "price" the seller creates in their mind.
@@Ajente02
Part 1/3
Many thanks for the answer!
It is quite clear that when we discuss value here with Mr Cockshott, we have different opinions.
* term “goods”
- Quote “Any good produced to be exchanged in the market”
According to Marx's view and my view, a produced good only becomes a commodity when it becomes a use value for others through exchange (!).
Only with the exchange is the social usefulness of the work expended for this recognized and thus also its value-creating character.
Before the exchange, such a product is merely a potential commodity to which an expected value is assigned.
I inserted the relevant quote from Marx in my previous comment.
* Term "Necessary labour time"
"Socially necessary labour time" means "socially necessary labour time on average". This cannot be calculated from production data.
* Example:
An entrepreneur manufactures navigation devices. For a piece of equipment he has proportional costs of constant capital (buildings, ancillary products, electricity, communication, with Marx also machines) of c = £100.
Its cost for labor (only human for Marx) is v = £100.
He estimates that he could currently get a surplus value of s= £50 with such a device. So he adds this to the cost c + v and gets the expected value for his product of £250, which he makes visible to potential buyers as an asking price of £250.
** Inset expected value
Note: All prices for products in department stores are asking prices that reflect expected values.
It is not certain whether the corresponding products will be bought at these expected values, and if they are bought, only market activities will determine whether all products are bought at this expected value.
If the entrepreneur estimates that the sale is not going well and he lowers the price, he lowers the expected value, which is reflected in a changed asking price.
It's clearer in the bazaar. There, a specified price is expected as an offer price anyway.
** Example - first sale
He sells 100 of this navigation device to the “Jupiter” retail chain. In the negotiations he manages to achieve the expected surplus value of s = £50.
This determines the necessary working hours.
At this point, a distinction must be made as to how this is calculated.
a) According to Marx
the surplus value is produced exclusively by the living labor v.
At an average company worker value of £50 per hour, 2 human workers worked 1 hour each on such a device.
The buyer (Jupiter chain) pays £50 surplus value, so the entrepreneur only has to pay 1 worker for an hour. An hour is unpaid for the entrepreneur, but not for the second worker, because he is paid for this hour by the buyer.
The entrepreneur keeps this £50 for himself, which Marx identified as capitalist exploitation.
By purchasing 100 devices, the necessary working time for these 100 devices is halved from 2 hours to 1 hour. The 2nd hour is the so-called unpaid or overtime, i.e. the overtime or unpaid labour time is 1 hour.
It follows that for these 100 devices the average working time required is 1 hour.
If these are the only devices of their kind, that would also be the socially average necessary working time for these devices.
b) In my opinion
the surplus value is not only generated by the human workforce, but also by the machines etc.
However, that is another topic and will not be discussed here.
But in this case the added value would be divided pro rata between the costs involved: £25 or ½ hour in human labor and £25 in constant capital (at the same cost share), or ½ hour.
By purchasing 100 devices, the necessary working time for these 100 devices is halved from 2 hours to 1 hour. The 2nd hour is the so-called unpaid labour time or overtime, i.e. the overtime is 1 hour.
@@Ajente02
Part 2/3
It follows that for these 100 devices the average labour time required is 1 hour.
If these are the only devices of their kind, that would also be the socially average necessary labour time for these devices.
b) In my opinion
the surplus value is not only generated by the human workforce, but also by the machines etc.
However, that is another topic and will not be discussed here.
But in this case the surplus value would be divided pro rata between the costs involved: £25 or ½ hour in human labor and £25 in constant capital (at the same cost share), or ½ hour.
** Example - second sale
The entrepreneur does not succeed in selling 100 devices to the second retail chain "Multimediamarkt". He can only sell 50. His wish to achieve £100 surplus value per device cannot be fulfilled. He can only negotiate £60.
I leave the calculation here on Marx's explanations.
This results in a different necessary labour time for each piece of equipment: the entrepreneur has to pay £40 for the human labour, and the buyer pays £60.
The necessary labour time for these devices is therefore only 0.8 hours and the unpaid labour time is therefore 1.2 hours.
If these are all the devices produced, then the average socially necessary labour time can be calculated as follows:
100 x 1 hour + 50 x 0.8 hours = 100 hours + 40 hours = 140 hours.
The average overtime is
100 x 1 hour + 50 x 1.2 hours = 100 hours + 60 hours.
Note: The socially necessary labour time cannot be calculated on the basis of the production costs, because firstly there is no socially necessary labour time on the production side, since everything is private work in the private sphere of the entrepreneur and secondly, the unpaid labour is not yet certain. The surplus labor can only be calculated after the products have been sold on the market and only then can the socially necessary labour time be calculated.
Addition:
This example can be expanded to include other production sites for the same device type, other cost distributions for c and v, and other surplus value achieved.
* On labor value and exchange value
The labor value according to Marx is a subjective value, because it is a one-sided expected value fixed on the production side of commodity society.
The example above shows that. On the production side of commodity society there is still no surplus value. Only a buyer on the market can pay for the surplus value.
On the production side, only an surplus value to be achieved or an expected surplus value can be estimated.
Marx describes the formation of value with his value formula (Capital III): W = c + v + s.
He applies this formula to the production side of commodity society, because that is where the costs c + v arise. In addition, the market has no meaning for him in terms of value creation.
But there is still no surplus value on the production side. Surplus value can only be paid by a buyer on the market.
Even if the entrepreneur in the example above without selling the devices for the 150 devices
Would get handed down £7,500 (£50 per device) out of the sky, that would not be an surplus value, because this money would initially reimburse part of the costs.
However, for real surplus value, the cost must be fully recovered!
Since the surplus value is part of the value, there can only be one expected value on the production side. Marx's value formula needs to be adjusted accordingly:
W|expected = c|cost factor, replacement expected + v|cost factor, replacement expected + s|expected.
This expected value is not a real one.
According to Marx, real value is formed in exchange on the market when the product of labour becomes a use value for others.
Marx's value formula must also be adapted for the market:
W|real = c|cost replacing + v|cost replacing + s|real.
The real value can only be calculated once it is established whether the buyer is paying surplus value and, if so, how much.
With this formula it becomes clear that the value is not formed by the expenses, but by the reimbursement of the expenses and the real surplus value payment.
That's logical too! What value would a value formed from expenses have?
An entrepreneur could buy the most expensive materials, workforces, etc. and assemble expensive products, e.g. £50-Million- yachts, which nobody would buy.
Now this is getting interesting. Superb development, but I believe we should not rely so much on textual interpretation of Marx's writtings. The structural organization of the concepts commodity, use value, value, exchange value, value substance, price etc. is too varied among interpreters and many of them are consistent with Marx's text. The ambiguity in Marx's work here is real.
You are right that there remain instances of ambiguous use in his texts, but the conceptual structure got stronger as time passed
Thank you for the great educational video Mr Cockshott but please make the audio louder.
In debates with marginalists, how should we differentiate our understanding of use-value from utility, and how should we describe the relationship between value and use-value? I could foresee an semantic objection from marginalizes that our definition of value seems self-defining if value (SNLT) is one thing but value in use another.
Labour time can be measured. You can compute the total labour used by each industry - direct and indirect - and then compare this with the exchange value of the industry's output. Do that accross all industries in a country and you find a very close correlation, typically > 96% correlation.
There is no analogous test that can be done on the theory of marginal utility.
This presentation is excellent, but the value form people will say that the 'abstract' in 'socially abstract necessary labor time' is abstracted through the exchange relationship, and they are right. What you are saying is that there are two processes of abstraction, one is a laborer moving from one kind of concrete labor to another and the other is the identification of coat making labor and linen making labor in the exchange of a coat for 20 yards of linen. I think you solve this paradox beautifully by pointing out, as Marx does in the letter to Kugelmann, that abstract labor time (in the value form people's sense) cannot diverge too far from clock time labor or society ceases to reporduce itself. Nonetheless, I would have appreciated if you had addressed the process of abstraction more head on, because that is where the value form theorists are going to point.
I may have to produce a video specifically on abstraction.
That is not what abstract means in this context. The conditions for this abstraction to occur depend on market exchange, but the abstraction itself is in the fact that all commodities are produced by a homogenous expenditure of human laboring capacity, confusing the conditions for the actual property, itself is a similar problem to the conflation of value form and value.
I was always under the impression that Exchange Value is the labor crystalized in the commodity, while price is the monetary expression of value, something totally distinct.
And that price varies over time, because of supply and demand, but value only changes after changes to production.
Which is also what seems to be the case when I read Value, Price and Profit: "So far the market price of a commodity coincides with its value. On the other hand, the oscillations of market prices, rising now over, sinking now under the value or natural price, depend upon the fluctuations of supply and demand."
there are three types of value to distinguish from
use value: concrete, non-quantifiable
labour value: abstract, measured in average labour time
exchange value: abstract, measured in whatever something is exchanged in
if the exchange value is measured in money, it's called price
unfortunately, all of this is obscured by the fact, that marx occasionally calls both labour value and exchange value just "value" and it's up to you to guess what he means
exchange value is monetary value
@@symbolsarenotreality4595 no. remember the example with 20 yards of linen equaling one coat. exchange value existed even before money was invented. it takes the form of whatever some commodity is exchanged for. only nowadays it pretty much always takes the form of money
🤓 I think we could streamline discussions if we started referring to the value of the crystalized labor as the commodity's _cost_ (ideally expressed in hours), then refer to the value demanded by the merchant as the _price._ Then leave it to the merchant to explain why those values differ. 😜
@@serversurfer6169 capitalism
So, is it accurate to say that the reason that signal channel between value substance and form is noisy because of the anarchic conditions of production under capitalism (private property + equivalent exchange)? And would it also be true to say that an economy that accurately measures value must be one that is well organized and based on cooperation instead of competition? I’m trying to make sure I understand the causal reason behind the noise, I struggle with the maths admittedly
Broadly speaking yes.
I struggle with math as well but I am glad Paul presents these videos in terms that can be understood.
Mr Cockshott, i have read your Book Toward a new Socialism, where you discribed (using british statistics) how inequal the society is, and that you could - double wages - for the most people if there would be a GDP distribution whitout profit. May you do the math again with statistics from today? I am a big fan of exact numbers. How many more you could redistribute in the contemporary (way more inequal) society?
In the US, corporate profits are up to about two trillion dollars a quarter, or eight trillion a year. That's about $64,000 per worker, or $25,000 per citizen, going to shareholders instead. 🥀
Best book outline the nature of fiat currency is a critique of political economy by Marx.
I might be confused, perhaps indicate where you think I am erring:
I feel like, especially regards the final sections, the '*socially necessary*' aspect is being occluded.
I.e. value concerns 'socially necessary' labour-time; and I take this not to mean only the relative average physical/technical conditions of labour, but of those necessary to produce/reproduce commodities necessary to reproduce/produce the MoP and LP necessary for capital to reproduce and expand.
Emphasizing only the centrifugal force of average technical conditions of labour appears to me to either move to an almost adapted physiocratic argument.
This seems important as regards price. Insofar that 'supply and demand' regulates prices, is this not simply another way of saying price signals are (tumultuously) determining what is socially necessary for the reproduction of private capital: both as a matter of reproducing the necessary labour force, and necessary means of production (and no further)?
In this sense, transcending capitalism is not merely about eliminating bosses, or even ending exploitation as such. It is about ending the organization of all human labour within the limits of realizing an abstraction (surplus labour-time), or its social form (money).
This further seems important as regards imagining how value (which I agree cannot be abolished, as such) might operate differently under different social conditions. To escape, for example, phenomenal social contradictions like technical advance and reductions in necessary labour-time (which might otherwise result in more stuff/less necessary working time) resulting in unemployment.
when I was learning all this I was constantly confused by which terms refer to human society in general and are meant at being Marx's explication of the nature of human society for the purposes of communist criticism; and which terms applied specifically to a capitalist society and were meant to reveal the nature and contradictions of capitalism.
Stalin explained that there are capital goods, for example, where you simply don't know how long it will take for them to "pay for themselves." One does not even know how long it will take to develop them. He said, in effect, "For the individual capitalist, it makes no sense to invest a lot of money in something that will not yield profits for 20 years, if ever.
That the law of value has no regulating influence may be true for essential goods like housing and food, but it makes no sense to run a large swimming pool if it is only used by 5 people a day.
Certainly, experience with detailed cost accounting was lacking at the time.
Far be it for me to critique centuries of economic thought I barely understand but I really wish we didn't have to use the same word to refer to so many different things
We should start talking about production _costs,_ preferably in terms of minutes, and then compare that to _prices._ ✊🤓💜
@@serversurfer6169 hmmm I see the idea
Which text goes over the Maths of this? Is it Machover's 'Laws of Chaos' or is it the recent 'How labor powers the global economy?
That and classical econophysics which has more on the metric spaces.
I never get a notice even though I am a Patreon supporter. You Tube keeps a tight lip on when Professor Cockshott releases a video.
I assumed youtube notified all subscribers. I will put out notifications on patreon in future to make sure
@@paulcockshott8733 Thank you.
Quick question, when it comes to volume II of capital proving that the proportionality between prices and values is what causes capitalist reproduction to occur, would that imply that if prices and values weren't proportional to one another then a sort of crisis would happen so that the capitalist class would be unable to reproduce itself?
Wow this pretty much debunks UE video on value. He should have consulted you beforehand.
Sorry but who is UE?
@@paulcockshott8733 Probably Unlearning Economics. He did a video recently on value and cited the Bichler and Nitzan paper. The suspicion is that he is a follower of their Capital as Power "school" that rejects class struggle.
LOL I know right? Someone should post this vid on his twit
How does CaP reject class struggle? How does pointing out that a gun or monopoly (capital) has a lot of power which is used to extract profits reject class struggle?
@@paulcockshott8733 I think he refers to Unlearning Economics, another UA-cam channel
If “the determination of value in no way depends on commodity exchange”, why is a commodity that can’t be sold valueless junk?
Take the concrete example I gave from June this year when gas producers were forced to sell gas at 5p a therm. Was gas 'valueless junk' that day, or did the price fall below its value?
The point is that in Marxist, and indeed classical, economics price is distinct from value. Price can be above or below value, but that is due to temporary shortfalls or excess respectively of supply over demand. You are confusing value with exchange value.
Is the particular reason why that particular commodity is unable to be realised into the market a permanent one, or a temporal one? If it's a permanent one (ex.: the commodity is destroyed, or is lost in an unreachable place like a shipwrek), then it indeed turns into valueless junk. If it's a temporal one (ex.: an economic crisis, or a bad marketing performance), it's only "valueless junk" meanwhile/until it can be sold again. So it means that, as long as the commodity retains its 'commodity' property (it is, it's avaliable to be exchanged into the market), it retains its exchange value; however, as long as it still exist in a social space (it is, it's not destroyed or unreachable to human interaction), it never looses its value.
What exactly do you if you mean by saying "if can think you abolish the law of value" . I mean the argument he has is that given things have a cost of production which usually translate to their market price. However in a socialist system of economy because things are governed by social needs you can shift the end price point of various things by a system of cross subsidies, hence we can make X product cheap and Y product expensive. By doing such hence if you want to lower the price of bread or transportation you subsided the price difference between its value and what it would cost in a market economy. So say bread is 5 GBP, price target is 2 GBP, in a socialist planned economy if the social need for bread is high you fill the cap by giving that industry the missing 3 GBP it would if sold directly at its average price (approx to value). The rightist in the party wanted to abolish this system and make things for social need be paid at their value, which would make things really expensive in some places. Stalin fought against this but they won and eventually made it so the end price was sold a it's value. Which is what you do not want. As long the enterprises and central planning are keeping track of the real value of things, and the prices offsef they're creating by the system of cross subsidy then all is good.
The issue is (and I think you can agree here) these subsidies are temporal and circumstantial, they do not "abolish" the law of value. Even if you can make certain necessary goods more affordable with them, they could also carry the counter effect of making them more scarce (as the subsidy doesn't eliminate the technical/environmental constraints that make the good more expensive to begin with, so its reproduction level would still be slower than the consumption level of the population).
Law of value can only be "abolished" ("extinguished" would be more precise, just like Engels pointed with the state) once the production capacity of a certain good has adquired post-scarcity levels (it is, once its reproduction level surpasses its consumption levels).
@@Ajente02 Exactly. If the state wants to lower the price of bread, the answer is to provide free ovens to bakers, not subsidize each loaf they bake. ✊
Thank you for this video! It encourages discussion!
From my point of view, the term value should be explained differently than in this video, i.e. there is something wrong with Marx's depiction of value. Marx himself also contradicts himself in explaining value.
There is no difference between value and exchange value.
Marx defines this difference because he assumes a value that is created with production. But no value is created with production - that's what Marx also says: only socially useful work creates value.
If a paid journeyman of a master made a desk for his master during working hours, then he carried out this work in the master's private area. This work was not socially useful and therefore did not create value.
The master is very happy about his desk.
Due to an unforeseen event, he urgently needs money and wants to sell the desk. According to Marx, he estimates his expenses for the selling price: c = £100, v = £300, i.e. his costs for the desk amounted to £400 pro rata. But as a master craftsman, he wants to earn more from the sale of the desk than it cost him to make it. He estimates he can currently earn a surplus value of s = £100 (the desk looks very nice). So he comes up with an expected value of £500. He makes this visible as an offer price for potential buyers.
If no buyer is found, the status of the work expended on that table will not change - it remains private.
However, if a buyer is found who fully reimburses the costs and also pays the expected surplus value, then the value of £500 is formed with the exchange, i.e. on the market.
This is real value in the economic sense and, according to Marx, also exchange value.
Value is a social relationship. Such is only formed between people and it only works between people. In this case, that ratio is in relation to £500, not £450, nor £550.
With the exchange, the value is assigned both to the product (here the desk), which becomes a commodity with the exchange according to Marx, and to the value equivalent (here £500).
There are no hidden value shares between the exchange partners.
According to Marx, a product of labor only becomes a commodity when it becomes a use value for others through exchange.
Only then can the work expended on it be described as socially useful and thus value-creating.
But that only happens on the market.
Value is a general term not just limited to marxism.
Exchange value is a marxist term for monetary value.
Your example doesn't invalide Marx's distinction between value and exchange value. You're just commenting on the transition from petty artisan production in the domestic economy (self-consumption in the private sphere) to the market exonomy (social consumption in the public sphere), which is very sporadic and doesn't affect the general behavior of the social relations. The privately-made desk for self-consumption still had a value (the labour time it took to made), even if/when it was unsuited for exchange in form of a commodity. Of course, this value is only realised (in the form of echange value) in the exchange process, but even before that, with the production process, it already exists as a value (even if just in a potential form).
Also, one must remember, the domestic economy is also socially useful.
@@symbolsarenotreality4595
Yes. Aristotle already spoke of it, as did Ricardo, A. Smith and many others.
Value has a general meaning, is not just a symbol for something subjective or similar.
Marx defined exchange value because he realized that his "labour value" was not used in the market.
On the one hand, Marx assumes that value is created with production; on the other hand, he expects goods to be exchanged at equivalent value. But he noted that no one trades based on his "labor value." So he constructed an additional value, the exchange value, which should be different from the labor or commodity value.
However, he failed to notice that even according to his explanations in Capital, his "labor value" is not a real value, but only an expected value.
Real value and exchange value are the same.
@@Ajente02
2022-11-28
Many thanks for the answer!
However, this does not agree with Marx either: Marx distinguishes between private and socially useful work.
The apprentice does private work for his master, i.e. he does not sell what he makes for his master to him - the product is in the master's private area from the start.
In this area, work does not count as socially useful - economics is not about ideal usefulness, but only about usefulness in the economic sense, i.e. the products of work must be exchanged so that the work expended on them can be qualified as socially useful:
* * *
Capital I, p. 30
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.)12
* * *
To remove any doubt, let's change the example: the table is built by the master's son, without any thought of replacement. The master does not pay the son to work either.
Then it is 100% that the work done is private work - no value is formed related to this desktop.
@@rainerlippert "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."
I think you misunderstand Marx here. The intent of the worker at the time of production doesn't dictate whether the product can later be declared a commodity, even if his language here seems to imply it. Rather, this is determined simply by its use values _for others._ "Commodity" is one of the many use values for a table, even if it's not the use it's put to first. "Gift for my master" is another. How something is used doesn't affect its value, assuming it's not destroyed in the process or whatever. The table's underlying "value" (i.e. cost) remains the same, however the worker/master/customer make use of it, and Marx measures that value in the minutes spent in its production, then proposes such valuation be reestablished as the basis for exchange. ✊
For those interested in a discussion:
Under @Ajente002's comment, the classic interpretations of the LTV were increased
Goods,
socially necessary working time,
value and exchange value
reaffirmed.
In my view, however, these terms cannot be explained so clearly.
Value itself is quite broad, exchange value is a specific kind of value, eg monetary value
Value isn't broad. What do you value? There you go! You people argue over terms of your own invention like Christians arguing over the trinity. Irrelevant.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 Clearly someone who doesn't understand the relevance of debate to discover truth. As scientist these debates are relevant just because you're un intellectuals and like to think that by not speaking about things we discover things by ignorance just shows you generally appeal ignorance as your basis of thought and thus are a ally of religion in that respect. While we do the very opposite.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 what you posted is just nonsense, value is a specific classical economic term and this is why economists or ppl interested talk about it.
@@danieljliverslxxxix1164 What a load of absolute sophist gibberish.
The term value itself is broad/general and has multiple contexts. Exchange value is a specific context.
@@felixii4931 wtf are you blabbering about? Value is a general term that does not just apply to economics. Exchange value is a specific context of value in regard to monetary economics.
Marx says that average price is a good approximate of value. Additionally I mean on Wikipedia page of the thinking is quiet different and the Wikipedia page is result of many peoples thoughts so for them to converge on this suggests that there are competing definitions. Additionally if you read any Marx where his says value and swap exchange value in his word usage the function of the flow English remains the same however. Try replacing exchange value with prices and you'd get nonsense on par with classical economist confusion of these terms.
Demonstrate your latter claim with an actual passage please.
Both
You can abolish market relations to adquire goods (commodities).
But how can you abolish the time needed to make goods (value)?
@@Ajente02 Ask any hunter gather how exactly much socially necessary labour time it took to hunt that Auroch or if they even have a concept of "time"
@@organiccomposition Just because they didn't consciously measured (or even conceptualized) labour time doesn't mean they weren't conscious of its existence. Even animals are conscious of the passing of time!
If you read on how hunter-gather made barter, you'll see they subconsciously exchanged equal values of goods (it is, they bartered goods which took them equal time to obtain/make, under normal conditions).
I would have disagree with this because exchange value does equal value. You're talking about price of exchange price. Marx talked about the confusion of classical economists with average price, price and value. You're doing that by making exchange value equals price. It's not exchange value is value. Price is what the form that reflects it.
Price approx value. Value = Exchange value.
Price is the exchange value in terms of the money commodity. In practice nobody bothers with exchange values in terms of anything else except in the currency markets. Value is the attractor of prices, that is to say of exchange values, but day to day prices, and thus exchange values, diverge from values so value is not equal to exchange value.
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