Value and human labour

[Dialectical Wizard]

In Marxian economic theory something can only have value, if it's made through human labour right?

[tallguy]

In Marxian economic theory something can only have value, if it's made through human labour right?
Unless we have a radically different understanding of the term "value", I am bound to retort, tell that to people who are fighting over water and land.

[Dialectical Wizard]

Unless we have a radically different understanding of the term "value", I am bound to retort, tell that to people who are fighting over water and land.


Are you suggesting that value only exists in the eye of the beholder?

[reb]

Only labour creates value.

[Thirsty Crow]

Are you suggesting that value only exists in the eye of the beholder?
Land by itself is nothing if not a potential to be realized by labor - either in real estate or farming, for instance.

Likewise for water resources, which necessarily include the exertion of labor power for us to be able to buy that particular commodity (either subsidized through communal services or buy getting ourselves bottled water).

[Dialectical Wizard]

Land by itself is nothing if not a potential to be realized by labor - either in real estate or farming, for instance.

Likewise for water resources, which necessarily include the exertion of labor power for us to be able to buy that particular commodity (either subsidized through communal services or buy getting ourselves bottled water).


So nature has no intrinsic value, its only through our labour that we make it valuable?

[reb]

So nature has no intrinsic value, its only through our labour that we make it valuable?

A field produces no value just lying there by itself.

[Dialectical Wizard]

A field produces no value just lying there by itself.

You are talking about economic value right? But the piece of land does have use-value then?

[Blake's Baby]

Yes.

But when Marx talks about 'value' he means exchange value. If he means use-value he says 'use-value'.

So, as 'value' is embedded labour, a piece of land that is cleared to grow crops is worth more than land that has not been cleared (it has more value invested in it already), and a piece of land that is close to the market is worth more than one far away (because it takes more labour to transport product from a far-away piece of land).

Reb's quite right that a parcel of land, which is not worked, produces no value. It has a price of course, but price and value aren't the same thing.

[reb]

You are talking about economic value right? But the piece of land does have use-value then?

In marxian terminology, value means the amount of socially necessary labor contained within a commodity. This equates somewhat with exchange-value, so commodities have realitive value to each other based on the amount of labor contained within them. A commodity also has to have a use-value for it to be socially necessary. A piece of land can have many different types of use-value but owning it and not doing anything with it will not produce any value itself. Renting it out for people to live on also produces no real value so rent is paid out of value production, not a source of value itself.

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

Well to quote Marx himself in chapter one of Capital:

"Anyhow, whether the coat be worn by the tailor or by his customer, in either case it operates as a use value. Nor is the relation between the coat and the labour that produced it altered by the circumstance that tailoring may have become a special trade, an independent branch of the social division of labour. Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor. But coats and linen, like every other element of material wealth that is not the spontaneous produce of Nature, must invariably owe their existence to a special productive activity, exercised with a definite aim, an activity that appropriates particular nature-given materials to particular human wants. So far therefore as labour is a creator of use value, is useful labour, it is a necessary condition, independent of all forms of society, for the existence of the human race; it is an eternal nature-imposed necessity, without which there can be no material exchanges between man and Nature, and therefore no life.

The use values, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements – matter and labour. If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter.[13] Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces. We see, then, that labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use values produced by labour. As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother."

And in the critique of the Gotha programme he also criticises those who think labour is the only source of use values:

"Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power. the above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct insofar as it is implied that labor is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. But a socialist program cannot allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that lone give them meaning. And insofar as man from the beginning behaves toward nature, the primary source of all instruments and subjects of labor, as an owner, treats her as belonging to him, his labor becomes the source of use values, therefore also of wealth. The bourgeois have very good grounds for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labor; since precisely from the fact that labor depends on nature it follows that the man who possesses no other property than his labor power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the slave of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labor. He can only work with their permission, hence live only with their permission."

But that's use-value obviously, not value (as in socially necessary labour time).

[Five Year Plan]

In Marxian economic theory something can only have value, if it's made through human labour right?

Right, but that doesn't mean it can't have an exchange value or a price or a use value.


Unless we have a radically different understanding of the term "value", I am bound to retort, tell that to people who are fighting over water and land.

The definition of value isn't "things people fight over." Something can be desired as a result of its utility, like access to fresh water, without that thing having been produced by human labor. The law of value, in its highest form, refers to how individual commodity exchanges act as a mechanism to determine social reproduction decisions by producers. If you are dealing with something that cannot be reproduced by people, like precious works of art or gifts of nature, the law of value does not, by definition, apply. The theory of rent applies.


A field produces no value just lying there by itself.

Correct, but it does have a price and an exchange value derived from the anticipated value that labor on the field will yield after it is brought into a capitalist labor process.

[Blake's Baby]

Right, but that doesn't mean it can't have an exchange value or a price or a use value...

It can't have exchange-value because exchange value is derived from labour.

[Five Year Plan]

It can't have exchange-value because exchange value is derived from labour.

In a product that contains value, exchange value is its phenomenal form, but I am not aware of any place where Marx says that an object can have an exchange value only if it also contains value. Marx was very clear in distinguishing the two after, I think, his work on Theories of Surplus Value. Kliman has a good article on the topic somewhere about Marx's fashioning the concept of "intrinsic value" and how it was distinct from exchange value.

[Thirsty Crow]

So nature has no intrinsic value, its only through our labour that we make it valuable?
The use of the term in denoting regulative mechanisms in the production of life and the means of life apart from objects' utility (use value) enables us to say that nature has no intrinsic value, yes.

The key issue being the multiple meanings, or rather uses of the word "value".

[Dialectical Wizard]

It can't have exchange-value because exchange value is derived from labour.



Can you provide us some evidence to back up your claim?

[Blake's Baby]

A commodity "...has use-value for others; but for himself (the seller) its only direct use-value is that of being a depository of exchange-value, and, consequently, a means of exchange....Hence commodities must be realised as values before they can be realised as use-values....For the labour spent upon them counts effectively, only in so far as it is spent in a form that is useful for others. Whether that labour is useful for others, and its product consequently capable of satisfying the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange." Capital Volume 1, chapter 2: Exchange


"The determination of price by cost of production is tantamount to the determination of price by the labor-time requisite to the production of a commodity, for the cost of production consists, first of raw materials and wear and tear of tools, etc., i.e., of industrial products whose production has cost a certain number of work-days, which therefore represent a certain amount of labor-time, and, secondly, of direct labor, which is also measured by its duration." Wage Labour and Capital: Chapter 3

[Five Year Plan]

A commodity "...has use-value for others; but for himself (the seller) its only direct use-value is that of being a depository of exchange-value, and, consequently, a means of exchange....Hence commodities must be realised as values before they can be realised as use-values....For the labour spent upon them counts effectively, only in so far as it is spent in a form that is useful for others. Whether that labour is useful for others, and its product consequently capable of satisfying the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange." Capital Volume 1, chapter 2: Exchange


"The determination of price by cost of production is tantamount to the determination of price by the labor-time requisite to the production of a commodity, for the cost of production consists, first of raw materials and wear and tear of tools, etc., i.e., of industrial products whose production has cost a certain number of work-days, which therefore represent a certain amount of labor-time, and, secondly, of direct labor, which is also measured by its duration." Wage Labour and Capital: Chapter 3

Both of these quotes verify what I said above about how commodities (items produced by human labor in order to be sold) have an exchange value that formally manifests the commodity's intrinsic value. Things like uncultivated land are not commodities in the sense of being produced by human labor in order to be sold. They sell at prices, however, that gravitate around their exchange value (as all prices do), despite not containing human labor. The logic behind their exchange value is not value, but a theory of rent derived from the labor theory of value.

[tallguy]

Are you suggesting that value only exists in the eye of the beholder?
No, I'm suggesting it resides in the utility of keeping you alive. Your labour keeps you alive indirectly and so has value. Water and other key primary resources such as food in and on the the ground keep you alive directly and so also have value.

Anything that feeds, water, clothes and houses you has value.

[Blake's Baby]

Use-value. Things that keep you alive have use-value. Labour only has use-value if the ends it put to have use-value. I could spend the entire day lifting piles of socks and putting them down again, it doesn't increase either the use-value or exchange-value of the socks, nor does it keep me alive.

[tallguy]

Use-value. Things that keep you alive have use-value. Labour only has use-value if the ends it put to have use-value. I could spend the entire day lifting piles of socks and putting them down again, it doesn't increase either the use-value or exchange-value of the socks, nor does it keep me alive.Yep, labour has indirect use value only. And only then if it is appropriately exercised. A fresh water river has use value in and of itself. In other words, it is a primary resource. I suppose that's what I meant in my earlier post by the "indirect value" of labour. By "indirect value", I was referring to its "exchange value" for things that had "use value" such as food.

[Blake's Baby]

OK, missed that, but understand what you're saying now.