>>The problem with the objectivity of value, as I see
>>it, is that objects and actions quite obviously have
>>different value to different people.
>
>Marx wasn't interested in 'value' in the sense you use it here (as
>in 'value judgement') which is largely influenced by Weberian
>sociology. Marx was interested in the concept of value that he found
>in political economy, which has no bearing on value judgements, but
>is a concept that accounts for the proportions in which commodities
>exchange. Marx was interested in that, and shared the view of the
>earlier political economists - which he called 'classical' - that it
>was objective (but differed in thinking that it was not a natural
>law). He differed with the later economists - which he called vulgar
>- who thought that value was a wholly subjective expression of the
>wills of the trading parties.
>
>I raised this discussion originally in this exchange to make it
>clear that Marx - however successfully or not - was interested in
>developing an objective science, a critique of political economy.
I meant to add to Jim's post, but I've forgotten about it until now. The question of value, however, came up again recently on PEN-l, which reminded me to post my thoughts on the subject, albeit belatedly.
One of the points of thinking in terms of value is, I think, to overcome the limit of economism. That is, thinking in terms of prices & wages alone can only tell us how one segment of workers fare in comparison to others, as well as whether the purchasing power of individual workers _as consumers_ is going up or down. Thought in terms of prices & wages, lower wages for other segments of workers may seem good to you, as they allow your segment to command more products & services created by them. Thought in terms of value, however, lower wages for other segments of workers essentially cheapen the value of your segment's labor power. Thus, even though your real wages as well as nominal wages are going up, you may be still losing out to the class that exploit you. Thought only in terms of wages & prices (terms of market competition), there is no objective basis for solidarity across barriers (occupational categories, national borders, productive vs. unproductive labor, races, genders, etc.) that separate different segments of workers, but thinking in terms of value allows us to discover the objective basis. -- Yoshie
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