Abstract

In all social circumstances, material reproduction involves the generation and disposition of particular products (specific use-values, in appropriate quantities) by means of an allocation of available resources—natural and produced physical resources, but also, crucially, human labors. Each particular use-value is produced because a portion of available social labor takes the form of the specific activities it requires. So in all times and places, each qualitatively distinct use-value is inherently associated with a qualitatively specific cluster of human laboring activities.