Greetings fellow proles.
I'm going off of wikipedia here so bear with me.
"From the taste of wheat it is not possible to tell who produced it, a Russian serf, a French peasant or an English capitalist. Although use-values serve social needs and therefore exist within the social framework, they do not express the social relations of production. For instance, let us take as a use-value a commodity such as a diamond. We cannot tell by looking at it that the diamond is a commodity. Where it serves as an aesthetic or mechanical use-value, on the neck of a courtesan or in the hand of a glass-cutter, it is a diamond and not a commodity." A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
Does he provide reasoning as to why a diamond is not a commodity?
What the hell is social relations of production? Is he referring to who created the product (a Russian serf, a French peasant or an English capitalist)?
Am I right in my interpretation that use-value is Marx's word for worth? It's not really a price theory. Rather he says price is based on knowledge and valuation of the object. Commodity pricing is therefore not based on the use-value but an arbitrary valuation made by the purchaser. From here Marx says labor should not be treated like a commodity but priced from it's use-value.
How does he suggest an abstract concept like use-value be determined?
Does Marx's beef with capitalism come from the idea that wealth should be distributed based on this concept of use-value and not by price?
Relations of production deal with broad social forces, which are historical in nature, regarding distribution and bargaining power. The slave has no bargaining power, the serf gains some bargaining power (feudalism), the wage laborer gains some more bargaining power (capitalism), and eventually communism will bring about perfect equality and efficient distribution. Marx's main dialectic was this tension between the forces of production (the tools and machinery cultivated by capitalism) and the relations of production. According to Marx, capitalism made real progress in the former, but the latter is too restrictive and exploitative, causing tension (this is why Marx believed that the destruction of capitalism is inevitable).
Use-value (utility) is a short-run phenomena which pushes prices away from their true "exchange value." It's subjective value in its totality. So the use-value of diamonds is very small when compared to that of water. But Marx didn't understand that prices are determined by marginal utility (use-value). The diamond, at the margin, is more valued then water at the margin.
Labor is not a commodity, according to Marx, because it is intrinsically connected to the human spirit. This is his concept of "alienation." Marx wants objective prices to represent labor time (the amount of labor required for production). This means you have to eliminate profit and use-value.
"If we wish to preserve a free society, it is essential that we recognize that the desirability of a particular object is not sufficient justification for the use of coercion."
use-value just means utility in a somewhat more restricted sense then how austrians would use it.
Social relations of production must mean something like the value others put on your things -something is a commodity because others value it not because you value it.
And secondly I think marx wanted things to priced according to socially useful labor time -a mixture of use-value and labor value which he believed was not fully paid to workers in wages but was skimmed off by the employers in the form of profit.
Marx didn't want to destroy 'use-value.' Use value would still exist in a communism society since people would still be utilizing the mature capital from capitalism. He wanted to eliminate profit, money and above all the division of labor.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
"He wanted to eliminate ... above all the division of labor. "
What a nut job!
Do you have a link or something about that? Is it common knowsledge?
Anybody still advocate this?
My humble blog
It's easy to refute an argument if you first misrepresent it. William Keizer
Well the division of labor is the state of alienation. It's in the 1844 Manuscripts if you are interested in reading about it.
alienation is the most moronic concept ever used