| This question <75|67> overall <65|67> Josh: <66|66>. |
| Question 120: When Marx wrote that labor is the father and the earth the mother of use-values, should he also have included produced means of production in addition to nature and labor? |
| [66] Josh: No. Marx did not include produced means of production in addition to nature and labor, because the produced means of production is a product of labor. |
| Marx states “Labor, then, as the creator of use-values, as useful labor, is a condition of human existence which is independent on all forms of society; it is an eternal natural necessity which mediates the metabolism between man and nature, and therefore human life itself.” |
| Man's labor is necessary for its existence. Without labor on all levels there would be no advancing civilization or even to the next generation. Labor is what connects nature's products with useful products that we use everyday. Without labor that pavement street would be a jumble of rocks. Labor is the intermediary process between the trees outside and a binder full of paper. |
| Marx uses the example of the coat “The use-value coat and linen are combinations of, on the one hand, productive activity with a definite purpose, and, on the other, cloth and yarn; the values coat and linen, however are merely congealed quantities of homogenous labor.” |
| Produced means of production are simply a product of man's labor. Take a manufacturing machine for example. Someone had to make the metal; someone had to make the metal into gears; someone had to put the gears together to make the machine. Produced means of production is simply compounded labor. There are few modern commodities of use-values that don't require some sort of produced means of production. Modern products are made with produced means of production by using less inputs (labor) than before, thus they are made faster and less expensive. |
| Hans: You are stressing the importance of labor; but in all your examples the laborers are working with produced means of production (machinery, tools, materials), without which they would not have been able to produce the product. Is it ok to ignore that fact? |
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