Law of value

[Boboulas]

Ive been learning about it alot recently and i was wondering if this was an accurate description of the law of value?

http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/law-of-value-the-series/

Also if anyone can give me some more reading on the subject id be thankful or even just write down some basics.

[el_chavista]

BTW, can you elaborate on each question of the true/false quiz?


1. Marx’s theory of value holds that any human labor creates value.
2. Marx’s theory of value is intended to be a theory of market prices.
3. Marx’s theory of value is the same as his predecessor David Ricardo.
4. Marx didn’t believe the forces of supply and demand were relevant to explaining value.
5. Marx’s theory of value is a theory of what workers should get paid.
6. Marx’s theory of value was a theory about how a communist society should be run.
7. Marx didn’t think consumer demand played a role in prices, value or other economic phenomena.
8. Marx’s theory of value doesn’t work in free markets.
9. Marx’s theory of value can’t explain why useless things like mudpies don’t have value.
1 Only the proletarian's work becomes capitalized by the bourgeois.
2 No, that's the traditional "marginal theory of capitalist economy". Marx's theory of value got to do with human relations of production.
3 Marx's theory of value is based on that of Ricardo's (I can't elaborate more) :confused:
4 I think he realized that demand is relevant to prizes :confused:
5 Not so. Marx's theory of value is a theory about how the capital is formed.
6 All Marx's works are a critic of the capitalist economy.
7 Same as the 4th question :confused:
8 Marx's theory of value is independent of the capitalist epoch :confused:
9 Useless things or anything without a value for exchanging don't enter in the economic cycle of capitalist production :confused:

[StoneFrog]

BTW, can you elaborate on each question of the true/false quiz?

1 Only the proletarian's work becomes capitalized by the bourgeois.


Only just started Capital vol 1, but doesn't there have to be a use value for labour to produce value. I mean you can make a chair with 10 legs and takes you 16hrs of labour time to make it; but if no one needs or desires a ten legged chair it has no value. And in turn if there is no labour value but there is use value (such as air) there is no market value because air is freely available. And how labour value works i dont think in turn means only proletariat's produce value, but the class structure makes it so the proletariat's is the class in which uses their labour in society mostly to give value. So its not secluded to the proletariat and bourgeois relationship, its just that proletariat's in society now are forced to sell their labour to the bourgeois to live.

I might be wrong but thats what i got from what i've read so far.

[mikelepore]

1 Only the proletarian's work becomes capitalized by the bourgeois.

The point of question #1 (in addition to the "use value" criterion explained in the previous post) was to see if you understand that only "socially necessary" labor time contributes to exchange value.

The following is copied form Marx, "Capital", chapter 1:


"Some people might think that if the value of a
commodity is determined by the quantity of labour
spent on it, the more idle and unskillful the
labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be,
because more time would be required in its
production. The labour, however, that forms the
substance of value, is homogeneous human labour,
expenditure of one uniform labour-power. The total
labour-power of society, which is embodied in the
sum total of the values of all commodities produced
by that society, counts here as one homogeneous
mass of human labour-power, composed though it be
of innumerable individual units. Each of these
units is the same as any other, so far as it has
the character of the average labour-power of
society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far
as it requires for producing a commodity, no more
time than is needed on an average, no more than is
socially necessary. The labour-time socially
necessary is that required to produce an article
under the normal conditions of production, and with
the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent
at the time. The introduction of power-looms into
England probably reduced by one-half the labour
required to weave a given quantity of yarn into
cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact,
continued to require the same time as before; but
for all that, the product of one hour of their
labour represented after the change only half an
hour's social labour, and consequently fell to
one-half its former value."