| This question <81|88> overall <83|85> Hans: <82|85>. |
| 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? |
| [84] Hans: Destutt's and Galiani's Errors Destutt made 3 errors and Galiani made 1 error. Altogether these are 4 errors. Let's go through them in turn. |
| (1) Brutal [81] correctly identifies Destutt's first error: Destutt says that both value and use value come from labor, although he should have said that use value comes from concrete labor and value from abstract labor. This is Detutt's main error; and since Ricardo agreed with Destutt here, Ricardo is making the same error. |
| (2) But Destutt makes a second error, which Marx points out but Ricardo tacitly corrects. Brutal did not get what this second error is. Does anyone else want to explain this second error so that we all understand it? It is an important one. |
| (3) Destutt makes a third error, which Marx does not mention, but which Brutal picks up on, although Brutal does not formulate it quite correctly. Brutal writes: |
| Another mistake made in this passage is the assumption that value comes only from labor. |
| He should have written: another mistake is the assumption that use value comes only from labor. As Marx said in Section 2, use value comes from concrete labor and nature, whereas value comes from abstract labor alone. |
| (4) Brutal brings in Galiani, although Galiani does not quite fit here. What is Galiani's mistake? It is a subtle one. Galiani seems to have it right. He writes “value is a relation between persons”, i.e., he does not succumb to the fetishism which says that value comes from the natural properties of things. Marx's correction is that Galiani should have added that this relation is “concealed beneath a material shell.” Why is this so important? If people were to deal directly with each other, without the detour over things, they would never treat each other in the cruel way they do concealed under the anonymous capitalist market. |
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