The development of the utility theory of value, the emergence of the utility theory of value

Political economy has existed as an independent discipline for more than 200 years, but people's understanding of it has always been divided. The reason for this is that the academic community has not clearly understood the basic concept of "value". The value of philosophy and the value of economics are two very different concepts.

The value of economics is measured in money, and money is the measure of value. The value of philosophy is subjective evaluation and has nothing to do with money.

In the process of studying political economy, the "labor theory of value", "utility theory of value" and "marginal utility theory" confuse the value of economics with the value of philosophy, which is far-fetched and self-deceptive, and leads the study of political economy astray. Therefore, we must clarify the relationship between labor, utility, margin, and value, and get to the root of the problem.

In fact, labor determines the value of the product's output (output), not the value of the product (**). That is, the more labor invested, the more output value of the product; The more labor put in, the higher the value of the product. The value of the product is determined by the cost, and the cost is composed of the value of the five factors of production (labor, technology, resources, capital, and system), and the value of these five factors of production together determines the value of the product, and the value of labor is only one of them.

Wang's Political Economy redefines some basic concepts and makes major breakthroughs on many key issues. He founded the "Social Productivity Theory", which laid a solid theoretical foundation for the in-depth study of political economy. The "law of value identity" was discovered, that is, the value of production factors is equal to the value of products, which fundamentally solved the logical problem of formation and change.

Through qualitative analysis, quantitative analysis and causal analysis, the essence and law of political and economic activities are revealed.

The idea that the basis of commodity exchange is reduced to the utility of goods is evident in the writings of the ancient Greek thinker Aristotle and the medieval ecclesiastical thinker Thomas Aquinas.

Utility axiology is an economic theory that explains value and its formation process based on the ability of goods to satisfy people's desires or people's subjective psychological evaluation of the utility of goods. The utility theory of value is opposed to the labor theory of value, which was mainly manifested as the general utility theory before the 60s of the 19th century, and mainly as the marginal utility theory after the 70s of the 19th century.

Utility theory of value

1. Brief introduction.

Founder: Aristotle.

Focus: Microeconomics.

Substance: The basis of commodity exchange is the view of the utility of goods.

Generation: The idea that the basis of commodity exchange is reduced to the utility of goods is evident in the writings of the ancient Greek thinker Aristotle and the medieval church thinker Thomas Aquinas.

2. Marginal utility axiology.

Marginal utility theorists derive value from the valuation of the utility of a commodity, and point out that the amount of value depends on the marginal utility, that is, the utility of the unit of commodity that satisfies one's last, i.e., the smallest desire. The term marginal utility, coined by Wiesel. Value is a purely subjective phenomenon, and as Menger points out, "value is neither a thing attached to goods, nor a property of goods that should exist in itself."

The goods at the disposal of homo economicus must have a certain significance for his life and welfare. Value is the judgment made by homo economicus about the meaning of goods. Therefore, it does not exist outside the consciousness of homo economicus.

Third, the market theory.

Marginal utility theorists use subjective axiology and supply and demand theory to explain the formation and determination of the market, and point out that the market price of goods is the result of the equilibrium of the subjective evaluation of goods by both supply and demand. However, according to the different analysis conditions and analysis methods, there are local equilibrium and general equilibrium. If it is assumed that the other commodities are unchanged, the market price of a commodity is only regulated by the subjective evaluation of the supply and demand sides of the commodity, and is determined by the marginal evaluation that can make the supply and demand reach equilibrium, which belongs to the analysis of local equilibrium, as is the case with the ** theory of the representatives of the Jevons and Lausanne schools.

If we look at the ** decisions of all commodities under the conditions of mutual influence and constraints, then the ** ratio of each commodity should be equal to the ratio of their scarcity (i.e., marginal utility), which belongs to the general equilibrium analysis, as is the case with Walras's ** theory.

There was no lack of conceptual impact in those years of study. The biggest impact is the theory of value, what determines the value of a thing or an economic activity? Does the transaction itself create value?

According to the labor theory of value that we have learned from the political economy of middle school and university, an object has its inherent value, that is, the time it takes to produce it is multiplied by the cost of labor time per social unit. In other words, only labor creates value, and trading does not create value.

However, in the 1987 "Financial Economics" class, I learned that there is no "intrinsic value" in anything or **, only relative value. That is, it is only valuable in relation to human utility. The value of something or ** depends on whether it can increase the utility of the individual, including consumption utility, wealth utility, subjective happiness or satisfaction.

This is equivalent to saying that even if it takes 10 billion yuan of investment and 100,000 laborers to build a beautiful image building, if no one or institution wants to use it, then the building will be worthless; No matter how much machinery and equipment is spent, if no one wants it, it is worthless; No matter how hard it takes to make clothes, if no one is willing to pay for it, it's just a pile of scrap cloth. This concept has helped me a lot, especially for me to finally understand that in the original period of the planned economy, we only took care of production, regardless of whether there was a demand or a market for what we produced, which was not creating value, but destroying value. It turns out that the generations of Galaxy computers, which have not come in handy for any practical use, are also a pile of scrap metal, destroying value.

Wait, wait.

On the other hand, even if a thing does not cost much investment or labor time, its value can still be very high. The most specific examples are companies like Tencent and Wuxi Suntech, which are less than ten years old, and they were all founded by dozens of people, and they did not have their own high-rise buildings (at least not until a few years ago), but the market value is billions of dollars, which is not only much higher than the actual cost of capital and time, but also more valuable than those who have invested a lot of money, have many plant equipment and high-rise buildings, and have been operating for decades. This is so because the value depends on the utility, or benefit, that these companies can bring, and not on the cost of their construction, and has little to do with the labor time required for construction; In other words, value is determined by future benefits, not by past costs.

- Excerpt from "The Logic of Finance", Chen Zhiwu.

Answer]: Bo Xiao B

The theory of utility value holds that the value of the celebration is not an intrinsic objective attribute of the commodity, but a subjective psychological evaluation of the utility of the basis article.

Menger did not recognize Marx's labor theory of value. According to Menger, value comes only from the satisfaction of our own desires. It means that value comes from people's subjective judgment, and how much an object satisfies your desires will be worth it.

According to this view, the value of water is not the same when you drink when you are thirsty and when you are not thirsty. Do you find it credible? If you follow this logic, the scenic spot "stealing guests" does not exist.

Because, the value of the water you drink in the scenic spot is not the same as the water you drink outside the scenic spot, and you should be charged money in the scenic spot. That's Menger's point.

Obviously, this is a ridiculous view. When you are thirsty, you buy a bottle of mineral water of brand A, but you buy a bottle of mineral water of brand B for the same capacity, but it is 2 yuan a bottle. The same is to satisfy the thirst of the need, the same utility for you, why set two**?

How can this elevated meta be explained? It is difficult to understand without the labor theory of value.

Menger's descendants continued Menger's theory that value stems from the subjective judgments of the two parties to the exchange about the commodity. This is even more nonsense. Retailers wholesale mineral water from wholesalers, neither party consumes water, the utility of water is zero for them, do they all think that this mineral water is worth zero yuan?

This exchange theory of value is certainly problematic.

Even in the retail sector, consumers will subjectively judge the value of goods. But on what basis did he judge? It's not about labor yet.

They will judge the value of a commodity based on the complexity of the labor involved in producing it. It's not about the feeling of consumption. Before the purchase, he has not consumed, what about the consumption utility of **?

Gossip economy.

The theory of value is the cornerstone of economics, and its basic task is to solve the problem of determining and measuring value. Although the germ of value ideas appeared as early as the ancient Greek and Roman periods, it was not until the middle of the 17th century that William? It was Pedi who founded the labor theory of value, which marked the formation of the theory of value.

However, Pedi's theory of value is still relatively fragmented and crude, and he treats the labor of producing gold and silver as an abstract labor that creates value, and confuses value with use value, so that his theory of value has a strong dualist color. Since then, economists have basically inherited and developed Pedi's theory of value along the two paths of labor theory of value and non-labor theory of value. The former acknowledges the basic view that labor creates value, while the latter classifies the creation of value as labor and other non-labor factors, and even explicitly opposes the labor theory of value.

This article intends to review and analyze this development context.

First, the perspective of production or supply——

Labor Theory of Value and Factor Theory of Value.

1) The Labor Theory of Value in Classical Economics.

As mentioned above, Pedi's labor theory of value is based on real production labor, proposing that labor creates value, creating a precedent for objective value theory. And Adam? As a landmark figure in the history of economic theory, Smith further systematized the labor theory of value.

He distinguishes between use value and exchange value, and explains the reasons why the exchange value of commodities is determined, constituted, and sometimes inconsistent with nature. However, because he confused labor with labor, he affirmed that the cost of labor determines value, and he also agreed that the purchase of labor determines value, so he fell into the vicious circle of value determining value, and could not explain the problem of profit and rent. So he had to ask:

The labor theory of value applies only to the simple exchange of commodity production before capitalism, while the labor theory of value is invalid during the capitalist period, and the value of commodities is composed of three incomes: wages, rent, and profits, all of which are the expenses of commodity production. In this way, Smith gradually abandoned the labor theory of value.

The labor theory of value was not held up to the end by Smith, but it was given by David? Ricardo was consistent. Ricardo explicitly stated that the center of political economy is value rather than use-value, and opposed utility as a source of value, insisting that labor determines value, and further recognized that it is socially necessary labor time that determines value.

This critiques Smith's view that three types of income constitute commodity value, and thus takes the labor theory of value a big step forward. However, because he did not discover the duality of labor, could not distinguish between labor and labor, and failed to recognize the transformation of value into production, this led to a fatal flaw in his theoretical system. Marx drew the rational kernel and correct elements from the labor theory of value in classical economics and founded the scientific labor theory of value.

Answer]: C Marginal utility is a concept commonly used by Western economists in analyzing the problem of consumption and explaining value decisions, and it is also the basis of utility axiology (especially the marginal utility axiology).