"Value was considered as objective, as an intrinsic quality inherent in things and not merely as the expression of various people's eagerness to acquire them" "It seriously vitiated the marvelous achievements of the classical economists and rendered the writings of their epigones, especially those of Marx and the Marxian school, entirely futile" Marx in Das Kapital did not considered value as an objective, intrisinc quality inherent in things. Rather, for him value was a social thing, which exist as if it be an objective one (that's what he would call, a few pages later and with some additional features, fetishism of commodity). Besides, Marx has distinguished value from exchange value and use value. An it was what he called abstract labor that was, for him, value (or the ground for value). If bastract labor is an social result of the market, then value is a social result too. Of course, people need to value thing differently. Marx has recgonized this when he wrote about use value. Another necessary condition for value was the existence of a social need for it (a market demand) that must be met through trade. Regards, Manoel Galdino Pereira Neto