O que é VALOR para Marx? | #LéxicoMarx, com Michael Heinrich

wherever occupied with mark's economic theory his critique of political economy knows that his value theory is the fundament of the whole theory but what does this value theory mean [Music] there is a notion very widespread saying it is a labor value theory and this labor value theory opposed to a utility value theory seems to say that labor is the source of value marx himself never spoke about labor value theory he always used the term value theory of course labour played a crucial role but not in such a simplistic way that the amount of labor you

need to produce something gives to this something the value things are a little bit more complicated in in marks first we have to make clear that there is a difference between use value the utility of something which satisfies certain needs and the exchange value that in exchange i can get a certain amount of other things the question what determines the exchange value was not raised by marx for the first time it is an old question and already adam smith criticized the idea that the utility of the thing will determine the exchange value adam smith's very

famous example is water and diamonds water for humans is the most important the most used thing without water we would die very quickly but the exchange value of diamonds are much much higher than the exchange value of water therefore already adam smith's concluded it's not utility which determines the exchange value and adam smith argued it is labor at least in in the european countries it is very easy to find water and to to have water but to find diamonds is very difficult first you must search for the diamonds you must construct a mine and this

mine after a rather short time will be exhausted and then the process has to to start new therefore adam smith argued the quantity of labor necessary for the production is determining the exchange value marks on the one hand made this this theory a little bit more precise he argued that when the commodity is has a double character use value and exchange value then also the commodity producing labor must have a double character one character is responsible for the use value the other character responsible for the exchange value and marx introduced a new distinction the distinction

between concrete labor and abstract labor with this distinction he doesn't mean two different kinds of labor it is more two different sites of the labour process producing a commodity with the concrete labor it is meant what we can see when we observe a person working this person is doing very concrete measures for example a carpenter is working with wood using very special instruments and the result is for example a table and of course the carpenter needs very special qualifications when we see a tailor then we see a person using for example linen uses instruments very

different from the instruments of the carpenter producing something very different not a table let us say a jacket or trousers and of course very different qualifications are needed the experienced carpenter will not be able to do the job of the tailor and also vice versa this is concrete labor resulting in a concrete use value but both when they produce commodities also produce an abstract economic value which is expressed as exchange value and here marks are views that the source of it the reason for it is the fact that they spent labor time labor time as

such you can say no matter if labor time in the form of carpenter's labor time or in the form of tailor's labor time just labor time and that this labor time is accepted by the society of apa as a part of the total social labor time and this acceptance comes by the exchange of the product as a commodity so when we go in more detail then we must say first not each labor as such produces value only the labor which produces a commodity can also produce this abstract economic value and this production is done not

just by the act of producing when nobody wants my commodity i produced nothing i produced also no value nevertheless i did a lot of efforts to produce this so why and and marx stresses this point also in in the beginning of capital that concrete labor is a necessity of human life in every society in every society we must produce use values but the production of abstract economic value is not a necessity of human life it is only necessary in an economy which rests on the production of commodities but commodity is a special social form a

special historical social form of the labor product only when this historical social form exists value exists and only then labor can produce value only then we can speak of abstract labor so the two sides the concrete labor and the abstract labor which is not distinguished by the classical political economy by adam smith by david ricardo represent two very different sides of the labor process and then also of the the commodity concrete labor use value is a necessity of human life in every society abstract labor the production of abstract economic value only exists in commodity production

so in all societies without commodity production we have not this abstract value by putting it together like adam smith and david ricardo is doing this this historical historic specific attribute abstract value is put together with the trans-historic necessity of producing use values and therefore for the bourgeois economists the abolition of commodity production is identical with the abolition of production as such when you say we don't want to have commodity production we don't want to have abstract labor because it is an economy resting on cooperation on a plant cooperation of producers who communicate with each other

who see the social process of production as a common process for the bourgeois economist this is the end of the world because then he thinks it is not any more a kind of useful and and qualified production and therefore critique of political economy mark's project to criticize the whole science of political economy already starts with this very first distinction he makes already at the beginning of the first chapter of volume one of capital the distinction between concrete labor and abstract labor there in the second sub-chapter of volume one he says this is the pivot of

the understanding of the political economy let's see it's