Editor's Introduction

George C. Wang

Chinese Economy, 1979, vol. 12, issue 4, 3-5

Abstract: This issue consists of four articles which appeared in early 1978 issues of >u>Jingji Yanjiu>/u> [Economic Research]. The first article, contributed by a senior economist, Yu Guanyuan, deals with the concept of use-value and with the question of how to measure economic efficiency. From either a theoretical or a methodological viewpoint, it is a scholarly work. Theoretically, it follows the Marxist doctrine measuring value in terms of labor, or the average socially necessary labor. Mr. Yu maintains that the concept of use-value is particularly important to a socialist economy in which production is for the purpose of meeting social needs rather than for profit as in a market economy in which exchange-value plays a dominant role. The kernel of the question lies in how to measure use-value. Marx held the view that "a use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labor in the abstract has been embodied or materialized in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labor, contained in the article" (Capital, Chas. H. Kerr and Co. edition [New York: Random House,], p. 45).

Date: 1979
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