one
The law of value refers to the value of commodities, which is the value basis of commodities in the market and circulation. How much value a commodity condenses requires the market to realize its value. It is certainly a good thing to achieve too much, but it will also hurt others. On the other hand, if it is too low, the value of this commodity cannot be fully realized and the owner will lose money. Therefore, the primary nature of the law of value is "equivalent exchange"-two commodities are exchanged at the same value. Of course, because it is difficult for the interchanger to know how much another commodity costs the owner, it is always difficult to carry out "equivalent exchange" according to a clear mathematical relationship, which can only be carried out through the price ratio formed by the long-term operation of the market. For individual businesses, commodity prices are fixed, and you can only organize production according to this market price. If your estimated production cost is too high, there is no need for production. This is also the way to realize the "equivalent exchange" in the law of value, which is realized by fixing the market price. In addition, if the value of a merchant's goods is lower than the market price of the goods, he will get more benefits through "unequal exchange" in the exchange, which is a positive change of the principle of "equal exchange" in the law of value. Through this variation, "equivalent exchange" is no longer a stagnant pool, it is alive, and will guide the law of value to its new form-the law of value essence; And "equivalent exchange" itself has completely become a dynamic equivalent exchange form.
But the law of value does not always have a dynamic side. In fact, it is more static. At this time, the market is in a state of "supply and demand balance". In fact, when economists consider the law of value, most of them presuppose the ideal state of market supply and demand balance. For example, Marx's research on the law of value in Das Kapital is actually based on the balance between supply and demand in the commodity market. The basic feature of this state is the lack of competition. Therefore, in the calm state of lack of competition in the market, "equivalent exchange" can be carried out smoothly, and how much value and benefit a commodity can achieve in the market. Therefore, in the case that the market economy is not very mature and lacks competition, we can see that how much benefit a commodity "requires" depends on how much value it condenses. For example, many years ago in China, entrepreneurs and economists demanded to act according to the law of value, in order to fully realize the value of a commodity in commodity exchange, although these commodities were of great value because of the high production cost at that time; Therefore, China has started a series of "price rationalization" reform activities, and this kind of price rationalization is mainly to raise the price of products above their costs. Therefore, the law of value has a static side. When this static law works, people think that the higher the value created, the better, because it can always be fully realized in the market where the static law of value plays a leading role. Therefore, when the law of value develops into dynamic law and dynamic equivalent exchange form, the law of value actually develops into a new law, that is, the law of value essence. When the commodity market is still a so-called' seller's market', merchants' commodities are exchanged with other commodities according to their own intrinsic value (through money) under the law of static value, no matter how low the merchant's commodity productivity is, how low the labor productivity is, and how low the quality and labor enthusiasm of workers are. However, in the current so-called' buyer's market', businesses are very nervous. They are busy with layoffs, technological transformation, mergers, attracting investment, and fighting price wars at the same time. At this time, the dynamic aspect of the law of value plays a role, and the intrinsic value of goods is no longer automatically and completely transformed into exchange value. But this is the higher operation mode of the law of value.
two
For the "non-equivalent exchange" under the above dynamic laws, in the case of market competition, the "value point" of equivalent exchange will gradually decrease, thus on the one hand, eliminating goods with a value higher than this value point, on the other hand, forcing merchants to improve efficiency and reduce commodity costs. We can see that in reality, with the increasingly fierce market competition, the value point of equivalent exchange is decreasing faster and faster, and people are under increasing pressure to improve efficiency and reduce commodity value. On the contrary, the faster people improve their efficiency, the fiercer the market competition. This situation has caused great pressure on producers; But on the other hand, it has greatly improved people's lives, because through this kind of competition, the prices of commodities have plummeted and people are more likely to get them. For example, a few years ago, a mobile phone cost tens of thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan. What about now? Much better mobile phones only cost 1 thousand or several thousand yuan, and with the deepening of market competition, the prices of these goods will continue to decline. This situation is deeply realized by people today. As long as the market economy continues to operate, people will get more benefits from it. This will make people with profound thoughts immediately realize the existence of a "bipolar unity": the price that human beings have to pay for more and more living conditions will become smaller and smaller. We know that in ancient times, people had to pay a great price to get a little food and clothing. It's different now, and the cost of obtaining the same material conditions is much smaller. This is the progress of human life, which stems from the improvement of human production efficiency and the development of human science and technology.
When thinkers realize the "bipolar unity" of human existence and development, they also realize the true essence of value: value is the minimum price that human beings must pay to achieve maximum survival. In different times of different productivity levels, the level of "maximum survival" obtained by human beings is obviously different, and the level of "minimum cost" paid by human beings is also different. The regularity is that the higher the productivity level, the higher the "maximum survival" level and the lower the "minimum cost" level; The former is directly proportional to the level of productivity, while the latter is inversely proportional to the level of productivity. Therefore, in fact, the concept of "value" has two opposite meanings: one is "paying the price" and the other is "getting paid". The two are unified and can be called "value for money"-obviously, there is no gain without paying the price, and at the same time, there will always be gain after paying the price. Therefore, from the above meaning, the essence of value can be summarized as: to produce the most, the greatest or the best use value at the least cost. It should be noted here that the essence of value cannot be attributed to "creating the maximum exchange value at the lowest cost", because "maximum exchange value" does not mean the same great use value and the same great useful items, or even the opposite. For example, in economically backward areas, the prices of many items are often very expensive, so that great exchange value can be obtained here at a small cost. This high exchange value has not improved the survival and progress of mankind. To improve the survival and progress of mankind, there must be a large number of "cheap and good quality" commodities, which is the ideal of mankind from ancient times to the present until the infinite future, and all kinds of economic models adopted by various social forms of mankind (whether slavery, feudalism or capitalism in the past) tend to this ideal. Therefore, what keeps pace with the development of human history is the continuous development of human productive forces. The ideal of human existence is realized through the continuous development of human productive forces, and the concept of "value" fundamentally reflects the ideal of human existence and the continuous progress of human productive forces. Therefore, it is inappropriate to regard value as "creating the maximum' exchange value' at the minimum cost" (although it is taken for granted in the market economy era, it is not without progressive significance); "Creating the maximum' use value' at the minimum cost" is the ultimate meaning of value.
But people's understanding of value lies in "getting paid", so in the market economy, value is confused with "exchange value" or even "use value"; The higher the value, the better. When people say that an item is "valuable", it definitely means: this item is very useful; How useful is it? First, it is very useful and satisfactory to use. Second, it can make money for others and bring good economic benefits to the owner. This is usually people's understanding of value and "goodwill". But in economics, the higher the value of a commodity, the less' good' it is, because it shows that the labor and capital value of this commodity is too high and the cost is too high. In a highly competitive market environment, the high cost of goods is the worst thing for its owners. For example, the value of the Iridium global satellite communication system in the United States is very high-"worth $4 billion", but because of its high value, no one has dared to take over the operation, and more than 80 satellites have to be destroyed with great regret. The United States is so rich that it has seen this expensive modern communication system destroyed and scrapped. What does this mean? Explain that although an article is very useful and advanced, if its value is too high, it will be in danger of "scrapping"; On the contrary, if the value of this iridium satellite system is only $654.38+0 billion (and the maintenance is not so expensive), then it will certainly not end up like this. So, is it of high value? Or low value? This problem will cause confusion in people's minds, even Marx. Because Marx defined value as "labor consumption" and then understood it as "exchange value". Marx only criticized "some people may think that since the value of goods is determined by the amount of labor consumed in producing goods, the lazier and less skilled a person is, the more valuable his goods are, because the more time he spends in manufacturing goods" (the French translation of Das Kapital is 15 page), and then pointed out that "the lower the labor productivity, the less time it takes to produce a commodity. Because he criticized that this situation is not a manifestation of "low labor productivity"? Since it is the "exchange value" that can be fully realized in the market, it is natural that the greater the value of goods, the better, but it also shows that the greater the "labor cost and capital value" of goods, the better, which is obviously absurd. As a result, the negative factor of quantity appeared in the concept of value: the "individual value" of goods.
Contradicted with its "social value" (actually exchange value), in which the profit of goods comes from the price difference between them. That is, the smaller the personal value, the better, and the greater the social value, the better. The problem here is actually efficiency, because the higher the efficiency, the smaller the individual value of goods. However, because social value is determined by the "socially necessary labor time" of producing a commodity (not by the actual time of producing this commodity), the so-called social value is also a kind of labor consumption. On the whole, the smaller the better. In this way, the real "beneficial value" is that when most of the social productive forces are still at a very low level, a businessman can efficiently produce goods with low individual value, that is, "high social value" minus "low individual value", and this difference is the real "beneficial value". The so-called "scarcity is precious" illustrates this situation. In a region where commodities are scarce, commodities are definitely "scarce", and all businesses will try their best to take advantage of this market vacancy and put in corresponding commodities in order to seek "excess profits". This is also the most natural thing in the era of market economy, and it is also a sign of the success of market economy. But does this mean that the goods placed here are of high value? Simply put, is the value of "rare and expensive" things necessarily high? Here its exchange value and market value will be high, but its intrinsic value is not necessarily high (and the lower the better). For example, if a person picks up a commodity for nothing (this shows that the intrinsic value of this commodity is equal to zero, because it doesn't cost the picker any money), he will also get a good profit by taking it to the market where this commodity is scarce, because it is also a "rare and expensive thing"; This shows that its exchange value and market value are as high as other commodities. However, when this market is gradually enriched and the market is slightly competitive, we will find that the price of this kind of free goods will plummet, while other goods will not. What does this mean? It shows that the intrinsic value of goods is a bottom line, and the price of goods cannot be lower than this bottom line, but the bottom line of goods picked up for nothing is zero, so its price can plummet but it is still profitable. So we often see stolen things, the price is many times lower.
Therefore, it is a kind of "value difference" that benefits, not value. But its "two-head difference" seems to be in line with the essence of my above values: the minimum price that human beings must pay in order to maximize their survival; Here, this very efficient merchant has realized the maximum benefit of the market at a small cost (individual goods with low value). But in fact, it is fundamentally different from my idea of the essence of value, because it is based on the fact that "most of the productive forces of the whole society are still at a very low level" (so that most people can't survive well). Once the social productivity is improved, this business will not have much benefit. As mentioned above, the essence of value cannot be summarized as "creating the maximum' exchange value' at the minimum cost". And my idea of the essence of value is to require the productivity of the whole society and the whole world to be greatly improved (specifically, to make the intrinsic value of each commodity tend to zero), so as to achieve the minimum price that human beings must pay in order to maximize their survival. The maximum survival achieved by the poor people of most people cannot be a real "beneficial value" for the whole mankind. But because it can drive and promote the improvement of social productive forces, it is also the only way to realize the ideal of true value essence.
three
In the static state of the law of value, we have not encountered such a complicated value situation. Here, as long as the value is "created" (in the name of some useful goods and use value), it can be realized in the market. At this time, people's labor materialized into value, on the one hand, it created some useful items, on the other hand, people also obtained the necessities of survival (from the realization of this value). Therefore, "creating value" is a noble thing. But in the active state of the law of value, we see the extremely complicated situation of value. Here, "creating value" is no longer even a thing worthy of reverence, because if you are as extensive and high-quality as before, you will not "create value", but may bring bad things to yourself. Here we see a cruel reality: what a producer produces is not necessarily wanted, and the value condensed in his products, that is, the value of the workers themselves, has not been realized, and then the survival of the workers themselves has become a problem. At this time, the market is not a shortage market, on the contrary, it is an excessively rich market. It is because people are too rich that it is difficult for them to realize their labor value, thus making their survival a problem. The only way to solve this absurd problem is to improve labor productivity and make the value of labor products as low as possible, so as to strive for the biggest "value difference" in market competition. At this time, it is the essential law of value that dominates the market and people's economic behavior, that is, to obtain the maximum use value at the lowest cost; The ultimate goal is that the value of each use value tends to be equal to zero. Value is equal to zero, which is the ultimate goal of all human economic activities.
Finally, I was thinking that the value is: 1 labor cost, 2 use value, 3 exchange value; These three viewpoints all have corresponding rationality. Most people understand value as exchange value, that is, the value that a commodity can achieve in the market (no matter how much labor is condensed), so in people's view, a commodity will have different values in different markets. And the cost of labor (including the value component of capital) does constitute the value of a commodity, otherwise why should it insist on a minimum reserve price in the market? For use value, there is no certain thinking ability, and it is basically difficult to distinguish it from value, so we often see the situation that the usefulness of goods is regarded as value invisibly. Although these three situations of value are so different, it is interesting that my thought of value essence "value is the minimum price that human beings must pay in order to maximize their survival" can well summarize and contain these three situations. For example, for 1, "value is the cost of labor" is the "minimum cost" in the thought of value essence. The so-called cost refers to people's labor cost, but it is more clearly pointed out that "labor cost" must be the smallest, rather than "the greater the labor cost, the greater its value"; For 2 "value is use value", it is the meaning of "maximum survival" in the thought of value essence, because in order to survive, there must be survival items, and the requirement of "maximum use value" is clearly pointed out here (realized through the improvement of productivity); Regarding "value is exchange value", it has been pointed out that the place where exchange value comes into being is the difference between the "social value" and its "personal value" of a commodity. Only this difference can show the profit of goods in the exchange process, and the greater the difference, the greater the profit. This "difference between the two ends" is so similar to my thought of the essence of value (mentioned earlier); In fact, if we narrowly understand my thoughts on the essence of value, we can draw the conclusion that value is the minimum price that human beings must pay to obtain the maximum benefit, and we have not clearly pointed out whether this "benefit" is use value (useful commodity) or currency. Therefore, it is also true that my thoughts on the essence of value link many values together.