Editing Use value (section)

== Role in political economy ==
In his textbook ''The Theory of Capitalist Development'' (1942), American Marxist [[Paul Sweezy]] claimed:

{{quotation|Use-value is an expression of a certain relation between the consumer and the object consumed. Political economy, on the other hand, is a social science of the relations between people. It follows that 'use-value as such' lies outside the sphere of investigation of political economy.}}

Marx explicitly rejected Sweezy and Uno's interpretation of use-value (see the previously cited quotation from 1859, in which use-value is distinguished from the general concept of utility). In a draft included in the [[Grundrisse]] manuscripts, which inspired the starting point of ''[[A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy]]'' and ''Das Kapital'', Marx states:

{{quotation|The commodity itself appears as unity of two aspects. It is use value, i.e. object of the satisfaction of any system whatever of human needs. This is its material side, which the most disparate epochs of production may have in common, and whose examination therefore lies beyond political economy. Use value falls within the realm of political economy ''as soon as it becomes modified by the modern relations of production, or as it, in turn, intervenes to modify them''. What it is customary to say about it in general terms, for the sake of good form, is confined to commonplaces which had a historic value in the first beginnings of the science, when the social forms of bourgeois production had still laboriously to be peeled out of the material, and, at great effort, to be established as independent objects of study. In fact, however, the use value of the commodity is a given presupposition—the material basis in which a specific economic relation presents itself. It is only this specific relation which stamps the use value as a commodity.|Karl Marx, Fragment on Value, in: ''Grundrisse'', Notebook 7 (1858), emphasis added<ref>{{cite web|author=Marx |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch17.htm#p867 |title=Economic Manuscripts: Grundrisse | pages = 851–861 | publisher=Marxists.org |access-date=13 March 2012}}</ref>}}

In his text [http://maximumred.blogspot.com/2005/05/rosdolsky-on-marxs-use-value.html ''The Making of Marx's 'Capital'''], [[Roman Rosdolsky]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://maximumred.blogspot.com/2005/05/rosdolsky-on-marxs-use-value.html |title=maximum red: Rosdolsky on Marx's 'use-value' |publisher=Maximumred.blogspot.com |date=27 May 2005 |access-date=13 March 2012}}</ref> explains the role of use value in Marx's economics. Marx himself, in the introduction to his ''Grundrisse'' manuscript, had defined the economic sphere as the ''totality'' of production, circulation, distribution ''and consumption''. However, as Marx did not live to finish ''Das Kapital'', he did not theorise how commercial relations would reshape the sphere of personal consumption in accordance with the requirements of [[capital accumulation]].{{fact|date=January 2024}}

Minor issues remained from these neoclassical theories, such as the question of the proper empirical definition of capital and labour in the laws of [[factor substitution]].  Other empirical issues include the so-called [[Solow Residual]] in which the heterogenous nature of labour is thoroughly explored for its qualitative elements beyond differentiation, and the concept of total factor productivity, prompting some to consider such things as technology, [[human capital]], and stock of knowledge.  Later scholars, such as [[Walter Benjamin]], [[Fernand Braudel]], [[Ben Fine]], [[Manuel Castells]] and [[Michel Aglietta]] attempted to fill the gap in Marx's unfinished work.  In modern times the theory has been extended to conclude that conversion of energy-driven work does not rely on labour-intensive inputs; thus use can be unsupervised work that develops a notion of human capital.{{fact|date=January 2024}}

''Equation:  A = P + hL''
(A, the Concept of Substitutive Work  = P, the loss of Primary Productive Energy (which is P/Ep, the coefficient of efficiency) + h, the units of energy (which is the energy consumed by workers during work done) * L, Labour time per hour){{fact|date=January 2024}}