Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2011

Publication Title

Rethinking Marxism

Volume

23

Issue

1

First Page

117

Keywords

Use Value, Life Value, Capacities, Life Requirements, Socialism

Last Page

134

Abstract

The paper argues that the future of socialism depends upon the category of use value being grounded in a wider and deeper conception of life value. Only as such can it serve as the regulating principle of a future democratic socialist society. Life value is anchored in an understanding of the human life's space-time continuum understood as a continuum of life requirements. The multiple life crises regularly generated by capitalism are crises of its incapacity to adequately satisfy these life requirements. The practical conclusion is that a democratic socialist economy must prioritize the production not of use values as such, but only of those use values that also have life value.

DOI

10.1080/08935696.2011.536352

Comments

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Rethinking Marxism: A Journal of Economics, Culture & Society 2011 copyright Taylor & Francis, available online here.

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