Marx & Adam Smith
This is an excerpt from the paper...
1. Marx's notion of the fetishism of commodities derived from "the peculiar social character of the labour that produces" commodities (Marx 436). He makes the claim that commodities have a peculiar character that derives neither from use value nor from determining factors of value. Human industry changes the forms of natural materials into useful objects. Such an object has a certain value in use (i.e., it satisfies particular human wants) and this value in use is clearly the result of human labor. The quantitative determination of value is based on such factors as the length of time it takes to produce the object and the quantity of labor involved. But "from the moment that men in any way work for one another" their labor also takes on a social form and it is from this fact that commodities derive their unusual nature (Marx 435). The social nature of people's labor takes on an objective character as the relation of the producers to their labor is, in a commodity, presented to them as a social relation between the products rather than between themselves. In other words, once people work for other people they no longer have a relationship with the producers of other products and the product (commodity) itself is assumed to be the possessor of all value. The maker of a table does not trade, or even buy, a pair of shoes from the maker of the shoes. Instead there is a value relation between the products of labor produced for other people that evolves from the exchange of
. . .
es to a level that has a direct relation to the costs of production. Inadequate prices will, of course, mean that the labor involved will not provide subsistence while investment will not produce a worthwhile return and prices that are too high will mean that competitors' commodities will be preferred by consumers. Therefore it is in the best interests of producers to maintain prices at a level that produces sufficient profit and ensures continuous sales. This natural competition will also regulate the market by inducing labor and capital to migrate from less profitable to more profitable endeavors. Therefore the market will regulate itself in the case of, for example, the existence of a glut of a particular commodity or service. Equally importantly, the possibility of greater profit will prompt labor and capital to seek to fill gaps in the meeting of demand by migrating to under-served portions of the market.
3. In Smith's conception economic growth, necessary to the increase in a country's wealth, was based on increasing division of labor and labor specialization, the discovery of new kinds of technology, and an increase in the amount of raw materials available to producers. Cooperative production increased productivity (
. . .
Some common words found in the essay are:
Revolution Marx, , Competition Smith, Adam Smith's, Marx Smith, Smith II3, surplus value, value labor, means production, Everymans Library, human labor, division labor, smith held, control means production, production hands, labor capital, means production hands, object produced, smith predicted,
Approximate Word count = 1333
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)
More Essays on Marx & Adam Smith
|
Customer Service
to Over
32,000 Professionally Written Papers!!!
