| This question <67|75> overall <72|74> Jason: <692|255>. |
| 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? |
| [73] Jason: In regards to this question which Marx poses when he draws a correlation between the father being the labor and the mother being the use-values. I believe that Marx should have included the concept of produced means of production as well as nature and labor because in the readings Marx brings up several important points. When you look at commodities or products and analyze everything that goes into their production one will discover that in order to produce a finished product a laborer must take different elements that are found in nature and reformulate them into a desired outcome. In addition one would discover that not all products are regarded as having the same use value as another product might have. Take for example a diamond and a sweat shirt. Everyone knows that in our culture today people have the notion that a diamond is extremely valuable. However for the majority of people a sweater would be seen as something with not very much value. There is a question however that can be asked in that if an individual who was extremely cold was presented with a diamond and a sweater what that individual would choose. That individual may select the sweater because he or she might view the sweater as being more valuable at that time while a diamond could not satisfy his or her needs. One must take into consideration that in order to obtain a diamond one must spend an enormous amount of labor in order to obtain that diamond where as a sweater doesn't require near as much labor to obtain as does the diamond. There have been many technological advances in recent times which have aided in the time it requires for a product to be made therefore the amount of labor is substantially reduced which increases productivity. |
| Hans: If someone who is extremely cold gives a diamond for a sweatshirt, this is an individual emergency and not an equilibrium situation. Assume there is a cold spell and demand for sweatshirts is so high that they rise in price: then more sweatshirts will be produced until the price of sweatshirts is again in line with other things. In Marx's theory, demand and supply determine the quantities of the things produced, not their price. I also tried to explain this in [55]. |
| But you didn't read the question right. The mother is not use-values but the earth. And Marx was talking about the origin of use-values, while you were discussing the origin of exchange-values. |
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