Zhonghua HE, Peng YANG. A Re-examination of Karl Marx’s Thought of "Use Value": From the Perspective of the Conversion of Money into Capital[J]. JOURNAL OF UNIVERSITY OF JINAN (Social Science Edition), 2022,32(2):5-13.
Zhonghua HE, Peng YANG. A Re-examination of Karl Marx’s Thought of "Use Value": From the Perspective of the Conversion of Money into Capital[J]. JOURNAL OF UNIVERSITY OF JINAN (Social Science Edition), 2022,32(2):5-13.DOI:
use value does not refer to usefulness in the general sense
but the commodity attribute which is intrinsically connected with the capitalist relations of production. Functions of money
analyzed within the framework of simple commodity circulation
cannot cover all use values of money. The use value of money
in essence
is increasing value by aiming at money itself. This is a unique historical phenomenon of the capitalist mode of production. The use value only in this sense constitutes the research subject of Marxist economics. The use value of labor as commodity means that its value can only increase by actually using it
that is
labor itself. Therefore
the realization of the use value of labor has become the real basis for the creation of surplus value. This particular relation of production determines the historical inevitability of value increase. Therefore
the investigation of the use value of labor is a necessary step to reveal the secret of surplus value. Karl Marx thought about the use value based on specific relations of production
avoiding the limitations of empirical and intuitive methods. At the same time
by grasping the development law of human society as a whole
it reveals the historical mechanism for use value
thus overcoming the limitations of all non-historical ways of thinking inherent in old researches of economics.