Section 2: Natural Attributes and Social Attributes

The three elements of value: natural value, functional value, and use value; According to its attributes, it can be divided into two parts: natural attributes and social attributes; The significance of this division is that it allows for a clearer and deeper understanding of value and its changes;

The natural value of a thing is attributed to a natural attribute, which can be seen from its definition, and we have also analyzed this in the first section, and we will not repeat it here, but we need to remind everyone that even if a thing has a function, but its function is not developed from the natural attribute, then it still belongs to the natural attribute, and the value it has is still its natural value rather than its functional value, for example, although a plant can produce oxygen, this belongs to its natural value rather than its functional value. You put a pot of flowers and an oxygen concentrator in your room, and the value of your utilization of both is completely different; I always wonder if this is the same utility in Western economics, and whether their value is the same in their eyes; Therefore, in their view, human science and technology have no other meaning except for greater satisfaction of desires, and are destined to eventually push society into a material society, and it is irreversible; That's all I have to say about the natural properties of value, and we'll learn more about it later in the other chapters; Let's analyze the social attributes of value in detail: the social attributes of value include its functional attributes and use attributes;

In the previous section, I remember that we said that functional attributes and use attributes are intersecting but do not contain, and give an example, but you may be curious at the time, the use of attributes does not contain functional attributes, that means that functional attributes can contain use attributes, in fact, the answer is also no, we can take a specific look, for example, in the event of a fire, you can use a computer to smash the doors and windows in order to escape, then this computer has use value for you, that is, it has use attributes, But what you are using is not its functional value, that is, not its functional attributes, but its natural properties (natural values); We'll talk about the relationship in a moment, but it's important to remember that functional value and use value don't contain each other; Okay, let's first analyze the functional attributes, we talked about the functional attributes of the functional value through its natural attributes; Another important feature of functional attributes is additiveness, a thing with functional value may accumulate the use value of other things in the process of forming its functional value, so its functional value may include the accumulation of the use value of other things and the transformation of its own natural value; Let's take a specific example, for example, the mobile phone you use, the formation process of its functional value can be briefly summarized as: the designer's design - processing on the > assembly line - > the use of other mature technologies - > assembly product, 4 parts, then each step needs to use the use attributes of other things to complete, so the functional value of its production includes the use value of other things; You may feel that it is awkward to use words like "other things", but it is true, in fact, these words can be expressed in two words - "product", because we only give the definition of product in the fourth section of this chapter, so we can only use this more awkward expression here;

The use attribute of a thing, that is, the use value, is generated when the functional attribute or natural attribute is realized, so a thing does not necessarily have a use value after it has functional value; For example, in the example of the mobile phone we mentioned above when we talked about the functional value, if we take it to a desert, its own functional value is unchanged, but its use value is zero; Therefore, the significance of use value is to stimulate its functional value or natural value to provide conditions for its possible realization;

The three values of things cannot replace each other, and the natural value and the functional value are the prerequisites for their use value, but they cannot determine the size of the use value; On the other hand, the external effects of natural value and functional value are accomplished through the use of value, but the same use value cannot determine the magnitude of its natural value and functional value;

Natural value – > use value;

natural value—> functional value—> use value;

Natural value is the natural attribute of things, functional value is the necessary social attribute of things, and use value is the conditional social attribute of things;

We can also give a specific example, for example, the value of a computer is determined by its natural value, functional value, and use value, its natural value is the resources consumed during production, the functional value is its own function of the product, and the use value is that the product can play a value in the hands of users; In reality, we can imagine what the value of Apple's mobile phone would be if it didn't have a large number of young users who were proficient in using its features! And we should note that most of the people who buy Apple mobile phones have mobile phones, and the demand generated by product replacement is only its appearance and not the essence, if the replacement of products is understood as a new increase in demand, then the demand will always be equal to the total value of the world, because everything will be replaced, without exception, and more importantly, the occurrence of replacement is more determined by personal subjective consciousness, which is meaningless to judge the value of things, and may have its role in commercial marketing; Human consciousness is subjective, the overall level of human consciousness is objective, it is an objective manifestation of the level of human consciousness in a historical period, so we can understand natural value as the natural objective standard of things, functional value as the objective standard of things themselves, and use value as the objective standard of the average level of human consciousness in the society in which we live (consciousness: thought and knowledge);

For example, the material cost of an item is 300, the manufacturing cost is 700, and its reasonable ownership value is 1000 in our space and time, then when we spend 1000 to buy this item, its total value of 1000 includes: natural value is 300, functional value is 400, and use value is 300; Of course, in reality, we can rarely buy a thing with a reasonable possession value, which may be higher or lower than its true value, and this change is not necessarily reasonable; How this reasonable value of possession can be obtained will be analysed later in the allocation of resources that we will talk about in Chapter 4;

Natural attributes are the prerequisites for social attributes, so can things have no functional value and use value, only natural value; Let's take an extreme example, Lu in the United States

a

Assembly sold land on one of the moons, Mars and Jupiter for £10 (about $14) per acre, and millions of people are said to have paid for it, and now holds a certificate of land for 280 million acres of alien land; , former U.S. presidents Ronald Reagan, Carter, famous movie stars Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, John Travolta, Eddie Murphy and some unnamed royals have become owners of alien lands. Three other mega companies bought 2.6 million acres each and wanted to go to alien mining for platinum and other minerals. If anyone wants to think that they are stupid, it must be him who has the problem, why would anyone spend money to buy something that looks "worthless"? Because this kind of conclusion that "there is no value" explained by the "utility theory of value" of Western economics is itself wrong, can we explain it with demand, what needs does the land on this moon satisfy? Which "paper" is it? As if not, "dreams" and "lies"? Do you think there will be so many people who will be willing to pay for "dreams" and "lies", I don't think it is possible, so the demand theory cannot explain this phenomenon, can Marx's economic theory? Because of Lu

a

Assembly observes the Moon, Mars, and Jupiter and deserves the necessary social labor time, so it gets its due value; It seems to be possible, but it is too unsatisfactory, because the value of this labor cannot be reflected; So what is its value, let's break it down in detail: Lu

a

The "land" sold by Assembly Company, its natural value as land is complete (we tentatively assume that there is no water on these planets), and its functional value and use value are currently zero, so its value is only composed of natural values, and we will say one more thing here, so when will it have its functional value and use value, according to the last sentence of the above report: 3 other mega companies have bought 2.6 million acres each, and they want to go to the extraterrestrial mining of platinum and other minerals. Only when this becomes a reality, that is, when they exploit their natural values and apply them to our world, can we say that these lands have functional and use value for us human beings;