| This question <142-2|84> overall <80|82> Brutal: <31|106>. |
| Question 203: Marx implies that Ricardo should not have agreed with the following passage by Destutt the Tracy: “‘As it is certain that our physical and moral faculties are alone our original riches, the employment of those faculties, labor of some kind, is our original treasure, and it is always from this employment that all those things are created which we call riches ... It is certain, too, that all those things only represent the labor which has created them, and if they have a value, or even two distinct values (use value and exchange value), they can only derive them from that' (the value) ‘of the labor from which they emanate'” Are there any errors in this passage? What are they? |
| [81] Brutal: Labors Marx disagrees with this statement because use value and exchange value come from concrete labor and abstract labor respectively. Destutt the Tracy does not recognize the two aspects of labor, abstract and concrete, and due to this oversight he lumps them together as simply “labor.” Marx makes the point that Ricardo has made the same mistake by agreeing with Destutt the Tracy's statement without correcting it. |
| One error in this passage is, therefore, Destutt the Tracy's suggestion that both use value and exchange value come from “labor” without separating “labor” into concrete labor and abstract labor. Another mistake made in this passage is the assumption that value comes only from labor. This relates to the mistake Galiani made that Marx pointed to earlier when he said. “[value is] a relation concealed beneath a material shell” (see Annotations p.70). Like Galiani, it seems Destutt the Tracy cannot see through this “material shell” to the relation that gives products of labor value. |
|
|
|||||