| This question <322|134> overall <126|128> Teight: <48|196>. |
| Question 280: What is the law of value? What does all this talk about “escaping” or “outwitting” the law of value mean? |
| [127] Teight: Law of Value. According to Marx's definition, value is the social property that makes things exchangeable in a commodity society. Furthermore, there is a law of value that suggests that a given good is as valuable as the social labor time that it took to produce such a good, or the labor time which the good contains. Notice, that the law of value and social labor are correlated in order to reach a certain outcome. Due to the fact that the law of value is socially persuaded, the only way to “escape” a socially persuaded bind is to become educated and aware of your surroundings and environment. Escaping the law of value would require separating an individual's social life from the individual that they are, thus making it very difficult to escape the law of value. |
| Hans: The law of value is not the result of persuasion, but it is the unintended effect of competition in the market place, as described in [55]. People try to escape the link between labor-time and exchange-value all the time, by finding ways to produce the same thing with less labor, or by finding the use-value everybody wants. Marx says that this is exactly the mechanism by which they force the law of value on each other. Everybody's eagerness to be the technology leader leads to it that everybody uses the same technology, and their search for the most desirable commodity makes sure that every desirable commodity is supplied in ample quantities. |
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