An Incontestable Argument for the Law of Value
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An invention, such as a therapy (e.g. the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine) or an LED bulb, is certainly something new. A statue sculpted out of a large monolith is certainly something new and different from the remaining part of the monolith.
Nevertheless, what matters most in this debate is just as a woman cannot re-conceive a baby of hers, anything existent cannot be reproduced. While producing LED bulbs, workers produce similar bulbs; they do not produce or reproduce the same bulb really. Nevertheless, they reproduce something and keep on doing it, and that something is the same amount of value. It’s the value of a commodity, be it a pearl ball or a work of art, not the commodity itself, that happens to be reproducible always, as I see it.I cannot see any good reason why the labour theory of value should fail to hold true for new, reproduced amounts of value.
That is reason why socialism/communism is going to be the unification of man/woman and nature. As One man Marx wrote on his Ethnological notebooks
“Nevertheless, they reproduce something and keep on doing it, and that something is the same amount of value”
Given that you think that each commodity is a one-off since no other can be made of the same atoms etc. Why do you not think that the same applies to periods of labour-time? Since you cannot run the same day, hour, minute or second twice either.
When ALB said “production doesn’t create anything new” I guess he could have made it longer “production doesn’t create anything new *out of nothing*. It merely changes the form of materials that originally came from nature.”
Of course new use-values are being produced all the time but they are not being created from nothing, but from materials that originally came from nature. The labour expended in developing a new use-value such as a covid vaccine is part of the socially necessary labour involved in producing it from start to finish. And of course vials containing it are reproducible.
“I cannot see any good reason why the labour theory of value should fail to hold true for new, reproduced amounts of value.
Who says it doesn’t? Except that when a use-value is reproduced its value won’t necessarily be the same as when it was previously produced. This wouldn’t be the case if in the meantime, due to increasing productivity, the amount of socially necessary labour to produce would be less.
The point about a commodity having to be reproducible to be subject to the labour theory of value is precisely this: that the value of a commodity made a few years previously, when the amount of socially necessary labour to produce it was higher but which was not sold, is not that but the current, lower amount of socially necessary labour to produce it.
In other words, the value of a commodity is the amount of socially necessary labour to produce it now and not what it was at the time it was produced, i.e it is the amount of socially necessary labour to reproduce it.
The Covid 19 vaccine did not come from nothing, it is also a product of labor and the material used came from nature, even more, the research is not new, it has travelled a long run of investigation and experimentation done by human beings, and scientists are also part of the world working class, the opposite it is just a bourgeois argumentation which negate the contributions made by the working class. All vaccines are a product of human labour
But, today isn’t the same day as the yesterday was, and the present hour, minute or second is Not the same as the past hour, minute or second.
Changes in form may certainly lead to the creation of new things. Proofs: a monolith & the statue sculpted out of it; any two humans; any two LED bulbs.
Changes in form may certainly lead to the creation of new things
Exactly. So what are we arguing about?
Production is changing the form of materials that originally came from nature into something useful that didn’t exist before. It is not creating those materials, just changing their form.
The production of new things is NOT the reproduction of any concrete things.
It’s your claim that ‘of course vials containing [COVID-19 vaccine] are reproducible’ (your reply #230154) that we’re arguing about. Evidently, your claim adds up to claiming that you can reproduce a vial and its content.
My point is the reproduction of anything concrete is NOT possible. Nevertheless, the amount of value of anything is reproducible.
Ah! I can see now why you are confused.
You are interpreting “reproduce” in a very literal sense. Of course you can’t use the same material from nature to make more than one example of a use-value. But what you can do is use other material from nature to produce more examples of the same use-value. That is all that is meant by “reproduce” in this context: produce the same use-value again; make another example of it.
It is quite possible to produce more vials and more vaccine. It is happening as we speak. This is not producing a new use-value, but reproducing an already existing one. What can’t be done is to keep on using the same material from nature to do this. But nobody is claiming that you can.
Nor is anybody saying that the production of some new use-value is the reproduction of anything. If it was, it wouldn’t be new. But it will normally be possible to produce more examples of it.
So, you’ve made it clear that you’re unaware of the distinction between the term ‘same’ and the term similar. You’re certainly wrong. The fact is you’re mistaking a use-value for another because the two use-values (two concrete things) are similar or equal in usefulness. You seem to be unable to grasp the simple fact that two triangles can be equal or similar in all respects, but none of them can be the same as the other.
I’m certainly correct to view two similar concrete things as similar. An exact replica of something concrete is certainly something new. Nevertheless, it’s not an invention nor a discovery if it was done by someone before.
As I stated before, we cannot reproduce anything concrete; nevertheless, the amount of value of anything is reproducible.
Prakash, you still state that “we cannot reproduce anything concrete”. Ok, but when we have produced something can we not produce an equivalent unit of the same thing again? What would you call this act of producing an equivalent unit again?
I’ve just remembered a word that would be useful here. That word is “fungible”. When we have been talking about commodities being “reproducible” we have said this because we take every unit of a particular type of commodity to be as good as every other (excluding the possibility of faulty / spoilt goods) Eg when I want to buy a Mars bar I am not bothered about which particular bar I will buy as all the bars are taken as being equivalent to the others. This property is called “fungibiulity”
I won’t take exception to terms like equivalent, equal, identical, similar or similar in all respects. I’m outright opposed to using the term ‘same’ in any of these senses.Two doctors equally qualified & experienced may be equivalent to one another, but they cannot be the same person as they’re two distinct entities.
The property called ‘“fungibiulity”’ makes two concrete things mutually interchangeable; it cannot turn them into one thing.
We are not arguing over the meaning of the word “same” but of the word “reproducable” and the words “capable of being reproduced”.
But, to prove your point, you used the expression ‘produce the same use-value again’ to mean ‘make another example of it.’ (your reply #230179)
I consider the use of the term ‘same’ in such a way is outright disputable. You cannot ‘produce the same use-value again’. And furthermore, in order to produce an ‘example’ (i.e. an exact replica) of something concrete (a certain ‘use-value’), you need not reproduce it (‘produce the same use-value again’), the way I see it.
Prakash, I’m going to suggest that the problem here is with how you parsed the word ‘use-value’ in that sentence. You read ‘use-value’ to mean something like ‘individual concrete thing’ but that is not the way it was being used in this context. In ALB’s comment what is meant by ‘use-value’ is something more like ‘a type of thing that fulfils a particular use’.
In respect to you’re second point how else can you make another unit of a particular good apart from making another one? In this context this is all that ‘reproduce’ means. The prefix ‘re’ means something like ‘to do again’ – we produce something, then we produce it again – we ‘reproduce’ it.
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