| This question <79|84> overall <81|83> Pippy: <82|82>. |
| Question 60: Labor power creates products. The value of the products comes from the value of labor power, and the use value from the use value of labor power. Is this a correct rendering of Marx's theory? |
| [82] Pippy: hats In (74), Toad answered this question by comparing the two different use values of different commodities and translating this difference into different values of the labor which produced them. I disagree. First, when commodities are compared with one another, their use values are abstracted, we are only able to compare them with regard to their common substance, the amount of socially necessary abstract labor time which they congeal. My second confusion, how one could measure these qualitative distinctions was addressed by Hans previously; they are in fact “apples and oranges.” |
| Now, The statement in question 60 is incorrect. |
| The capitalist purchases labor power to create commodities which will have a greater magnitude of value than the value of the inputs to produce the commodity. The laborer sells his labor power to the capitalist at its value, the amount of socially necessary abstract labor time embodied in the necessaries that refuel the worker. As the worker labors he creates value, he acts as the surrogate father for the capitalist with capital as the womb. His labor power is consumed in the production process, ergo it is the use value of labor power which creates the value we see embodied in the commodity. |
| Furthermore, the latter part of the statement “and the use value from the use of labor power”, is also false. The use value of the commodity has already been abstracted at the onset of its confrontation with other commodities as a valuable being in its social context. It has shed its natural properties like a gentleman who has removed his hat upon entering a room with proper company. The commodity as a social creature abandons its individual qualities when it sits in relation to other commodities. |
| Summary: |
| The value of a product is created by the use value of labor power. The use value of the product is extracted upon valuation. The value of labor power is the amount of abstract labor required to replenish labor power. |
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