Author(s)

Yingwen Zhang

Corresponding Author

Yingwen Zhang

Abstract

Traditionally, Marxist political economy took labor as the source of value and tried to liberate human beings by changing the relations of production. However, this conception failed to deal with the problem of desire and seemed to be at a loss before the materialist plight where desire keeps changing into need.From an anthropological view, this dilemma could be due to the expulsion of values out of the value theory. Born in modern society, Marxist political economy held a dichotomy between value and values, or economy and culture, thus canceled out possibilities of solving economic problems with social, cultural or philosophical answers, which was exactly many non-western societies did. This article calls for an open attitude to non-western societies' ideas of what value is and where value comes from, among which traditional Chinese thoughts is an example. It attributes the source of value to human's life instead of labor, and in this way may change the idea that people only deserve to survive when they work hard, and may bring new light about how human's life should be respected to modern society.

Keywords

Value; Values; Desire; Marxist Political Economy; Chinese Social Thoughts