Qian Jianxing Xiao Wei

This paper attempts to interpret the concept of "natural value" from the perspective of Marxism. It is worth noting that Marx's value discussion based on "labor", the essential activity of human beings, aims to reveal the mystery of surplus value generated by capital and expresses a distinct theoretical position, which is different from the philosophical and economic analysis path of natural value today. Therefore, it is very important to accurately understand Marx's related exposition and avoid misunderstanding of pragmatism and pragmatism.

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Let's take a look at Marx's view of natural value.

First, nature has use value, but it has no value in itself: "A thing can be use value rather than value. This makes something useful to people, not the product of human labor. Such as air, natural grasslands, virgin land, etc. " (Marx, 1983, p. 17). The usefulness of nature means that it has use value. "If a commodity is to become a value, it must first be a utility" (ibid., p. 23). The necessary condition of commodity value is usefulness (usefulness), and if it is useless, it has no value; But useful is not necessarily valuable. The only source of value is human labor. Without labor, there is no way to produce value. "Land is not the product of labor, so it has no value"; Natural forces such as waterfalls are also "worthless because there is no materialized labor". (Marx, 1975, pp. 702 and 729)

Second, both nature and labor create the use value of material wealth. Nature is the "thing" left after deducting all kinds of useful labor from labor products. They are independent of people and nature. Man changes the form of matter through labor, but "in this simple form-changing labor, he often relies on the help of natural forces." Therefore, labor is not the only source of use value or material wealth it produces "(Marx, 1983, p. 19-20). What we are talking about here is the use value, not the generation of value. In this sense, what people are talking about now is actually the use value of nature, and these two expressions are often confused, causing considerable confusion. Including the so-called "anthropocentrism" and "non-anthropocentrism", the difference lies in whether nature (environment) is only of use value to people or has its own value (that is, intrinsic value) independent of people. If we don't know the exact meaning and "context" of these concepts, I'm afraid we will never win anything.

Third, although nature has no value, the special possession relationship can make it have an "illusory price form". The use of natural forces can bring excess profits, but "natural forces are not the source of excess profits, but only the natural basis of excess profits, because it is the natural basis of extremely high labor productivity" (Marx, 1975, p. 728). The possession of natural forces (such as land) forms a monopoly, and some profits or excess profits generated by using it fall into the hands of landowners. Land ownership here is not the reason for creating excess profits, but the reason for making this part of profits occupied by land owners. Nature has a price because "there is a real economic relationship behind it" and "it is nothing more than capitalized land rent". (Marx, 1975, pp. 729-730) This leads to the ownership of nature: "It is the relations of production that create this right", not nature itself. Nature belongs to no one. "From a higher socio-economic perspective, an individual's private right to land is as absurd as one's private right to another. Even the whole society, a nation, and even all the societies that exist at the same time are not landowners. They are just occupiers and users of the land. " (ibid., pp. 874-875) Generally speaking, natural objects can only be "priced" if they have certain "ownership" because of the emergence of private rights (ownership).

The value that Marx talked about was "the simple condensation of undifferentiated human labor", and he explained the formation of value by "the embodiment or materialization of abstract human labor". And people's general labor is objectified in the utility of "things" (in fact, all tradable goods) and reflected in the use value of various commodities. Moreover, "the value of things can only be realized in exchange, that is, only in social relations." "In a collective society based on * * * sharing means of production, producers do not exchange their own products; The labor spent on the production of products does not show the value of these products here, nor does it show the attributes of something they have, because at this time, contrary to capitalist society, individual labor no longer goes through tortuous roads, but directly exists as a part of total labor. " (Marx, 1983, p. 63; "The Complete Works of Marx and Engels", Volume 19, Page 20) In a society where * * * shares the means of production, there is no commodity and labor doesn't even show value, so naturally it doesn't matter whether it is valuable or not. However, the emergence of private ownership makes nature an object that can be possessed; Capitalism magnifies this relationship to the extreme.

In early human society, natural objects were public and not scarce. Even today, there are still some natural objects that are not private and belong to non-competitive and non-exclusive public goods. They may be difficult to define specific property rights (ownership), such as the ocean; Or because it is rich but not scarce, such as air. But more accurately, it should be called quasi-public goods or crowded goods (quasi-? Public goods or crowded goods), whose consumption is within a certain range (which may be quite large), is very similar to pure public goods, and personal consumption will not reduce the same consumption of others; But if it exceeds this limit, it may reduce the utility to all consumers and produce negative utility. This is true of many environmental problems. . Later, there were a large number of natural objects, such as mountains, grasslands and mineral deposits. The clear property rights (ownership) relationship enabled people to trade natural objects, and these originally worthless things took the form of prices. However, Marx insisted that no matter what role the natural factors that have joined the production without success do not constitute a part of capital, but only unpaid natural forces. Taking the mining industry as an example, ore raw materials are not a part of prepaid capital, and the object of labor is not the product of past labor. "But on the basis of the capitalist mode of production, this unpaid natural force, like all productive forces, is manifested as the productivity of capital" (Marx, 1975, p. 840). Once capital combines labor with land (representing nature), it shows unlimited expansion ability.

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At present, some commentators agree with Marx's view that natural (environmental) resources themselves have no value, but they can have prices; Nature is endowed with the price by the possessor and obtains the commodity form, not the other way around. The intrinsic basis of natural price is that it has the property and function of providing human beings with means of production and living, and has utility or use value, so natural resources are transformed into economic resources; The scarcity of natural resources constitutes the external basis of natural prices. (See Liu Wen, Wang Yannao, Zhang Dunfu)

The intrinsic basis of natural price lies in the effective use of nature, but it can't be understood only from economics, because it also includes other functions such as ecology, sociology and aesthetics. The external basis of natural price is the relationship between supply and demand on the surface, but it is actually a "showdown" between the scarcity of natural resources and the current relations of production and ownership. As Marx said, "land rent is the economic realization of land ownership", "land ownership originally includes the land owner's right to develop land, underground resources and air, thus depriving the maintenance and development of life". (Marx, 1975, p. 715,872) But the real relations of production hidden in the form of land price (land rent) have never existed and will not exist forever. "Once the relations of production have reached the point where they must be replaced, this right and all transactions based on it are the material sources from society, that is, an economic and historical reason. (ibid., pp. 874-875) However, people regard "some phenomena based on capitalist production (commodity production in its whole scope) as the characteristics of land rent (and general agricultural products)" (ibid., p. 7 17). This confuses the essential difference between the price expression of value and the price form under a certain possession relationship.

Marx believes that land is the carrier of natural resources, and it is used to represent nature, because the natural forces that can be monopolized by people are always inseparable from land. "If we look at the labor process completely abstractly, we can say that there are only two factors at first-man and nature (labor and natural substances of labor). ..... From this point of view, land and labor seem to be the original factors of production, and the products specially used for labor, that is, the produced means of labor, means of labor and means of subsistence, are only a derivative factor. ..... It is completely abstract to decompose production into two factors, namely, people as labor undertakers and land (actually nature) as labor objects. " (The Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 32, page 109) In fact, it is through land price (land rent) that people directly realize the utility and scarcity of nature for the first time.

Some people think that nature has no value in the past, but now it has value, or that natural value is the product of social and economic development to a certain stage. For example, a large amount of human labor is now invested in the protection of natural forests, and the nature of forests has value; The exploration, measurement and management of non-renewable natural resources such as oil and minerals have created value. (See: edited by Wang Songlin; Qian Kuo and Chen Shaozhi; Paula Tsui, Li Fuqiang, Meng Bin)

The question here is, can nature with human labor replace the whole nature? If the natural price is calculated only by the amount of labor invested in nature now, the natural price may be underestimated or even have no price at all. Not to mention that after deducting all kinds of living labor, there is always an object, and there are natural forces that labor can't replace; Naturally, it's not because you put in labor before the "evaluation". Many natural objects (such as virgin forests) have positive effects on human beings, which are reflected by the negative effects produced by destroying them. People realize this, in fact, is the "credit" of natural revenge; The positive result of this revenge is to urge people to provide a price for natural objects that can reflect their utility and scarcity (depending on people's understanding level at that time), not just to see whether it contains labor and how much labor it contains; And further through the price mechanism to restrain people's production and consumption patterns, adjust the contradiction between supply and demand of natural resources. There are both the tenacious role of the law of supply and demand and the awakening of human natural consciousness.

Moreover, the price of land (nature) is not static. "The amount of land rent (and thus the value of land) is developed as a result of total social labor. On the one hand, with the development of society, the market and demand for land products will increase; On the other hand, the direct demand for land itself will also increase, because land itself is a condition for all possible and even non-agricultural production departments to compete in production. " "Not only the increase of population and the subsequent increase of housing demand, but also the development of fixed capital (this kind of fixed capital is either integrated in the land, or rooted and built on the land, such as all industrial buildings, railways, warehouses, factories, docks, etc.). ) will inevitably increase the land rent of the construction site. " (Marx, 1975, page 71718,872) When people find that natural resources are scarce, prices will rise accordingly; In order to reserve resources and protect the environment, such as returning farmland to forests and grazing land, it is necessary to invest labor, and this process of natural resource regeneration (production) will pay labor costs. As for nature (such as wilderness) that has not yet participated in labor, their prices should be considered in public environmental protection policies.

What is important is that "the process of economic reproduction ... is always intertwined with a natural reproduction process" (Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 2, page 339). The survival and development of human beings not only consume natural materials, but also reduce the quality of nature. Therefore, the natural ecosystem needs a process of recuperation. If human beings want sustainable development (the concept of sustainability comes from ecology), they must provide necessary compensation to the natural ecosystem, including material compensation and value compensation. Therefore, expanding Marx's reproduction theory is put on the agenda, that is, this kind of compensation can not be limited to the compensation between the two categories, but also must consider the compensation for nature. Specifically, the cost of environmental loss must be added to the product price. When establishing their own development goals, contemporary people should try to avoid actions that cause environmental losses to future generations. If these behaviors are inevitable, we must take appropriate ways of "saving" and "discounting" to compensate. Marx put it well that human beings "must improve the land and pass it on to future generations like good parents" (Marx, 1975, p. 875); Otherwise, there can be no sustainable development of economy, society and ecology.

Marx once pointed out meaningfully that if the purpose of labor itself is only to increase wealth, it is harmful and sinful. It is not Marx's thought to equate labor with wealth creation. Compared with the environmental losses caused by the blind pursuit of wealth and the destruction of nature, the economic value created by labor is negative to the total welfare of mankind; Its "harmful and sinful" influence not only makes development unsustainable, but may even endanger the survival of mankind.

British scholar Pierce and others divide the value of environmental resources into direct use value; Indirect use value, choice value and existence value. Direct use value is easier to understand; Indirect use value is similar to ecological service function; Choice value is the cost that people pay in advance to protect a natural resource for future use, similar to insurance premium; Existence value refers to the evaluation of environmental assets. If the virgin forest has a high potential value, people are willing to invest in protecting it. Many domestic works have also adopted this view. (See: Pierce, Wofford; Editor-in-Chief Wang Weizhong)

In fact, "value" (German Wert) usually reflects people's subjective evaluation and preference, while the classification of environmental value is that people have deepened their understanding of natural utility in the process of dealing with nature, or have continuously discovered new use value of nature. The reason why people give nature value "conceptually and linguistically" is that nature has the property of meeting its needs. "So what are people to people in practical experience, that is, the material that meets people's needs and makes people get' satisfied'?" People also call them that way. (The Complete Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 19, p. 406) The development of social economy has changed people's needs for nature, and the forms of activities people use to meet these needs have also been greatly enriched: nature can not only meet people's basic survival needs, but also provide functions such as satisfying human development, safety and beauty; It not only meets the needs of this generation, as long as we treat it well, it also meets the needs of human beings for generations to thrive and sustainable development.

In the heated discussion on labor theory of value in China, an influential view holds that in primitive society, the only source of value is labor. "This is not to say that other elements such as land are not spent under that condition, but that elements other than labor do not need to be paid and are free. As for why it is unpaid, it can be explained from the original public ownership of the means of production and the scarcity of natural resources at that time. The labor theory of value is usually derived from the assumed conditions and can explain that the production value determines this condition, but it only applies to this condition. " (Yan Zhijie, 15 page) With the development of social economy, the factors of production that determine value have expanded to land, capital, management, science and technology, etc. The monism of labor value should be extended to the pluralism of production factors. However, this view cannot give a strong explanation for the phenomenon that environmental factors are not fully included in the production cost, natural prices are generally underestimated and prominently manifested as "market failure" related to the environment. If the problem of scarce rent of natural resources is not solved, their allocation in the market will be inefficient; Scarce rent reflects the external effect brought by the reduction of resources, thus increasing the development cost. .

It is understandable that people try to expand the connotation of labor theory of value, but these attempts must be based on an accurate understanding of Marx's research methods on value theory, otherwise they can only "play" as Xi Yan Shu said. Marx's exposition begins with simple commodity relations, excluding other economic relations other than commodities and other factors of production other than labor; Then it analyzes the use value and the useful labor to create the use value; Then it further discusses the embodiment and objectification of labor, that is, the formation of general value. Critics therefore believe that "capitalism is a mode of production based on market price, and it has passed the exchange stage based on value." The familiar theoretical system is based on the value theory, and the exchange law in the primitive stage is used to explain the developed exchange law. This is the inherent contradiction of Marxist economic system, and it is also the source of radical conclusions that this kind of economics must draw. The most fundamental difference between price adjustment and value adjustment lies in the unity of value sources and the diversification of price sources. " (ibid., p. 38) In this regard, we might as well recall an explanation made by Engels in the preface to Volume III of Das Kapital: Marx discussed these issues in the process of "historical and logical formation". Only in this way can we understand "why he started from a simple commodity, rather than a conceptually and historically derived form, that is, a commodity that has been deformed under capitalism" (. Unfortunately, this explanation has not attracted enough attention.

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Althusser mentioned some people's misunderstanding when reading Das Kapital: "A question that has not been raised anywhere in Marx's works may have an important answer (Marx can express this answer only when he has accumulated a large number of images necessary to express this answer, that is, through' performance' and various forms of expression), so this is because Marx did not master it in his time. Of course, people will say that it's just a matter of one word, only one word is missing, because the object corresponding to this word exists completely. Of course, this is true, but this word is a concept. The concept of lack of structure will be manifested as some theoretical results in some specific expressions of Marx and some narratives consistent with specific expressions. This theoretical result will have its consequences. " (Althusser; Barry Barr, page 22) If we want to understand Marx, we must pay attention to the fact that we may not find the answer to the corresponding question in one place (such as labor is the only source of value), but we find the question itself in another place (such as why land, capital, management and technology are excluded from value creation). On the one hand, Marx defined the value of goods with the most basic human activity, namely abstract labor; On the other hand, he left a place for nature in some vacancy or indirect way in the discussion of value, which needs us to reveal.

Marx got rid of the shackles of superficial narration. "Some new aspects in his works that were previously neglected can only be revealed when theory (and practice) need to be revealed" (Schmidt, p. 93). When Marx analyzed the production price, he did not take the land factor into account, because the land rent obtained by the landowner by virtue of his monopoly on land did not participate in the process of average profit rate. However, he added, "when the productive forces develop to a certain stage, they always need a certain space, and the height of the building also has certain practical boundaries." The expansion of production beyond this limit requires the expansion of land area. "(Marx, 1975, p. 880) shows that he does not deny the role of land factors, but emphasizes that problems must be discussed at a" certain "stage, space and boundary.

In Marx's view, without nature, workers cannot create anything. Nature is the substance used by laborers to realize their labor, in which laborers carry out labor activities and production. Nature is not only a necessary condition for the use value of commodities (people have no objection to this), but also the basis of any labor "thing". The value created by labor is of course related to being useful to people and meeting their needs, but it does not mean that anything useful and meeting their needs is valuable. The universal concept of "value" comes from the relationship between people and external things that meet their needs. Words such as "Wert" or "Würde" were originally used for useful things themselves, and they existed long before they became commodities or even as "labor products". But this has nothing in common with the scientific definition of commodity' value'. "(The Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 19, pp. 406 and 4 16)

As far as the utility and scarcity of nature are concerned, its use value is a constant under certain circumstances. However, due to the changes in people's needs, people's ability to understand and transform nature is also constantly improving. It is also manifested as a variable: "We cannot confine them to rigid definitions, but should clarify them in the process of their historical or logical formation" (Marx, 1975, preface). Nature is abundant, but human beings will lose this state sooner or later and fall into the profound contradiction between human needs and natural supply. Under the historical conditions of capitalism, the material transformation between man and nature is accelerating, and the relationship between man and nature is constantly alienated. "Only capital can create a bourgeois society and create a universal possession of nature and social contact itself by members of society. This has produced the great civilized function of capital: it has created such a social stage. Compared with this social stage, all previous social stages were only manifested in the local development of human beings and the worship of nature. Only under the capitalist system, nature is just an object of human beings and a useful thing; It is no longer considered as a self-acting force; Theoretically, the understanding of the law of natural independence itself is just cunning, and its purpose is to make nature (whether as consumer goods or as means of production) obey people's needs. According to this trend, capital should not only overcome national boundaries and national prejudices, but also overcome natural myths and phenomena, and overcome the situation that has been handed down and closed to the outside world, satisfying existing needs and repeating the old way of life within a certain limit "(Complete Works of Marx and Engels, vol. 46, p. 393). Because the position of nature in the labor that determines value has changed, the objective function of natural price has to be revised.

Marx thinks that there are three ways to correct natural prices:

One is an alternative. Adding some natural forces without cost to production, if the products provided can meet people's needs, it will not be counted in the price decision; And if it can't meet people's needs, it must be replaced by someone's labor, and this new element will be added to capital. (See Marx, 1975, p. 840) The value of natural substitutes can "offset" the original natural price. For example, after a certain artificial material comes out, the price of the replaced natural material will change.

Second, according to the expected income that may be brought by natural forces, rent can be obtained through monopoly possession. "In places where natural forces can be monopolized and industrialists who use natural forces are guaranteed to obtain excess profits (whether it is waterfalls, rich mines, fish-rich waters or construction sites with favorable locations), those who become the owners of such natural objects because of the right to own part of the land will take this excess profit away from the capital performing their functions in the form of land rent." (Marx, 1975, p. 87 1 page) The capitalization of land rent is the land price, and its transaction must be based on the production relationship that creates the right to buy and sell land. Many natural objects are endowed with property rights, and it is precisely because of certain production relations that the right to buy and sell natural objects arises. Natural objects that were originally worthless have become commodities in this transaction, and they have a price (basically determined by expected income).

Third, through the "illusory" form, the worthless things have a price, and the artificial objective function is used to adjust this price. The quantity of value is often inconsistent with its monetary expression (price): "things without value can have a price in form." Here, the price performance is illusory, just like some quantities in mathematics. On the other hand, illusory price forms-such as the price of uncultivated land, which has no value because there is no materialized human labor-can cover up the indirect but real value relationship. (Marx, 1983, p. 83) This is roughly equivalent to the fact that "shadow price" is subject to some objective function, which reflects the relationship between cost and profit under certain social conditions.

Nature is not a commodity, but a place where the country itself is a capitalist producer (such as operating mines and forests). ), its products are' commodities', so it has the characteristics of all other commodities. " (The Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 19, Page 4 14) An important feature of the capitalist system is that everything is commercialized, and almost everything with use value (including physical and non-physical forms) is included in the category of goods. Securities, option index and environmental license are not products of labor, but because of their use value (it is not products that meet people's needs, but the use value of products)

In the current production relations, bringing natural (environmental) factors into the objective function of price can coordinate the contradiction between short-term economic benefits and long-term environmental benefits to a certain extent. Today, many countries have formulated laws and policies to clarify the property rights of various environmental resources, and through setting reasonable natural prices, they have paid for the exploitation, use and pollution discharge of nature, all in order to coordinate the tense relationship between man and nature. These works involve a lot of resources economics and environmental economics, which do not conform to Marx's desire to eliminate private ownership and "demand that land rent be handed over to society in the form of change" (The Complete Works of Marx and Engels, Volume 18, Page 3 15).

refer to

Louis althusser; Barry Barr, Etienne, 200 1: Reading Das Kapital, Central Compilation and Publishing House.

Liu Wen, Wang Yanyao, Zhang Dunfu, 1996: Resource Price, Commercial Press.

Marx, 1975: Capital, Volume 3, People's Publishing House.

1983: das Kapital, Volume 1, China Social Sciences Press.

Complete Works of Marx and Engels, 1975, 1977, 1979, 1998, People's Publishing House.

Pierce, David; Jeremy Wofford, 1996: The World is Endless-Economics, Environment and Sustainable Development, China Financial and Economic Press.

Edited by Qian Kuo and Chen Shaozhi. , 1996: Natural Resource Asset Management, Economic Management Press.

Schmidt, 1993: History and Structure —— On Hegel's Historical Theory of Marxism and Structuralism, Chongqing Publishing House.

Wang Songlin, ed. 1992: Utilization of natural resources and eco-economic system, China Environment Press.

Wang Weizhong, editor-in-chief, 1999: Analysis of China's sustainable development situation, Commercial Press.

Paula Tsui, Li Fuqiang, Meng Bin, 1999: Capitalized management of resources and sustainable development, Social Science Literature Publishing House.

Yan Zhijie, 200 1: A new probe into the labor theory of value, Peking University Publishing House.

(Author: Basic Department of Social Sciences, Fudan University)

Editor in charge: Huang (Philosophy Research, No.2, 2003)

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