Law of Value 1: Introduction (very interesting)

[ilaughatrightwingers]

Run time: 09:58 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGT-hygPqUM   Posted on YouTube: April 28, 2010 By YouTube Member: brendanmcooney Views on YouTube: 3554   Posted on DU: October 24, 2010 By DU Member: ilaughatrightwingers Views on DU: 213

 
This is an Introduction to a series of videos about Karl Marx's Theory of Value.

FAQ:
Q: Karl Marx? I thought he was a has-been.
A: Forget everything you thought you knew. It's time for some fresh air.

Q: What the hell is value?
A: When you work you are not producing in order to fulfill your own needs. You are producing so that someone can make a profit. Society is structured toward producing economic value, not meeting society's needs. What happens to a world in which all production is subsumed by value production? Marx wanted to answer this question.

Q: I think of value as being a subjective estimation of the worth of something.
A: That's not a question, but I'll answer it anyway. That is a different definition of value. People do place subjective valuations on things in the market. But these subjective estimations are structured by a much larger world of "value creation" in which people are working in order to produce things for market exchange. Marx saw that it was this unique structure of production (production for exchange) that was key to understanding capitalism. The fact that we must ration our labor efficiently to produce the commodities society demands means that it is the productivity of labor which underlies our subjective estimations of value, turning seemingly disparate and atomistic consumer decisions into long-term, objective price movements.

Q: Hasn't Marx's theory of value been discredited?
A: No. Only misunderstood.

Q: Why should I care about this?
A: Because we still live in a capitalist society and because Marx is the only thinker to develop a thorough critique of the social relations of a capitalist society and because we are living in a time of ideological crisis and because we can't have a left without a critique of capitalism....