| This question <724|93> overall <1034|2> Frosty: <966|2>. |
| Question 6: The first sentence of Capital says that commodities are the social form of wealth in capitalist societies. What, by contrast, is the content of wealth? |
| [1] Frosty: According to Marx, commodities are the social form of wealth in capitalist societies. He analyzes commodities as everything, whether raw materials or finished goods, which are produced for sale. |
| Hans: You apparently want to say that (1) Marx analyzes commodities and (2) for Marx, a commodity is everything produced for sale. This is right, but your formulation: “analyzes commodities as everything produced for sale” does not capture that. A correct use of the phrase “analyze as” would be: In his paranoia he analyzed everything she said as an attempt to deceive him. Forgive me for being pedantic about grammar here, but for such philosophical texts as Marx's, this is important. |
| [1] Frosty: Given that commodities are the social form of wealth, the content of wealth can be defined as the people who produce these commodities as well as the people who possess or demand these commodities. In general, people are the content of wealth in a capitalist society. If there weren't people to produce these commodities, as well as people to possess or demand these commodities, the social form of wealth may not exist. |
| Hans: This is an interesting and thoughtful definition. You say that the content of wealth is something deeper than wealth itself, it is the people. People are the purpose of wealth. |
| I have to say two things about this: |
| (1) This is not how Marx uses the concept “content of wealth.” Please answer me back with a more detailed discussion: why does Marx call commodities the social “form” of wealth? Why does he use here the word “form”? And try again to answer the question what, for Marx, is the content of wealth. |
| (2) You are not only giving a definition here, but you are also making an important substantive statement about capitalism by saying: |
| In general, people are the content of wealth in a capitalist society. |
| If you mean by this that people are the purpose of the wealth produced in capitalism then Marx would emphatically deny that. We will discuss this as the course goes on. |
| I have more to say about this answer but first I would like you to come back with another try: What does Marx consider to be the content of wealth? |
| [1] Frosty: (datestring)Wed, 11 Jan 1995 10:40:19 -0700 (MST)(/datestring) I think Marx uses the word “form” to describe commodities because he says that almost everything in modern society can be bought and sold. These commodities are social properties from which people get satisfaction for their needs. What then is the content of wealth for Marx? Could he perhaps be talking about the process of exchange of these commodities which can be used to measure the wealth of a society? Or could be perhaps mean the use-value of these commodities in a society? |
| Hans: Yes exactly, that is it. Use values are, in Marx's eyes, the content of material wealth. The unequal distribution of money in our society is therefore indeed an unequal distribution of wealth. Your earlier answer, that the people are wealth, seemed to make the individual responsible for how wealthy he or she is. Kind of: even if one lives under miserable conditions in a generally affluent society, one should find the inner peace and hapiness to feel “wealthy.” I say more about this in the file [36]. |
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