[1995ut:114-3]

This question <114-2|114-4> overall <114-2|114-4> Miata: <101|117>.

Question 901: Comparison Capital with Contribution

[114-3] Miata: Voluntary Assignment After I compared these two passages, I thought there are something different, which is Marx's idea and your idea. As the form of bourgeois wealth, the commodity was the prerequisite for the emergence of capital, and the commodities appear as the product of capital. Capital is predicted on the exchange of commodities. Also, a highly developed commodity exchange and the commodity as the universally necessary social form of the product can only emerge as the consequence of the capitalist mode of production. So, both money and commodities are elementary conditions of capital, and capital cannot come into being except on the foundation of the commodities including money.

The commodities must acquire a twofold mode of existence which are use-value and exchange-value. A use-value can gratify specific needs whether of individual or productive consumption. A exchange-value must have acquire a definite form from its use-value. It must represent both the unity and the duality of use-value and exchange-value. So, its exchange value acquire this distinctive form of its use-value. The commodity is treated as an autonomous exchange-value by acting as money. Thus since wheat, is sold as commodity as money.

Wheat is a distinct use-value as a commodity, and a use-value has value only in use, and it used for only the process of consumption. On the contrary, diamond, nobody cannot tell by looking at the diamond as a commodity which means that some people say only to keep a diamond, then, it does not have the use-value, and it is a diamond and not a commodity, but some people say that the diamond has the value to keep it because it is a diamond. These people say that wheat is wheat, and wheat does not have value.

Marx stated that, wheat as a commodity, in short, it is exchanged for other commodities in the most diverse proportions. The wheat has many exchange value instead of one. The exchanged-value of a commodity express something equal, and the exchange-value cannot be anything other than the mode of expression, the form of appearance, of a content from it. Also, The diamond is of very rare occurrence on the earth's surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an average, a great deal of labor-time. With richer mines, the same quantity of labor would be embodied in more diamonds, and their value would fall. If man succeeded, in transforming carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks. From these, the value of commodity, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productivity, of the labor which finds its realization within the commodity.

As use-values, commodities differ above all in the quality, while as exchange-values they can only differ in quantity, and therefore do not contain an atom of use-values.

Hans: You did not do the Assignment. You gave a motley assortment of Marx quotes and paraphrases, with little coherence and very little connection to the two passages which you were asked to compare. All your submissions are like that. I will insist in the future that you use your own words, otherwise you will get worse grades than this.

After I compared these two passages, I thought there are something different, which is Marx's idea and your idea. As the form of bourgeois wealth, the commodity was the prerequisite for the emergence of capital, and the commodities appear as the product of capital. Capital is predicted on the exchange of commodities. Also, a highly developed commodity exchange and the commodity as the universally necessary social form of the product can only emerge as the consequence of the capitalist mode of production. So, both money and commodities are elementary conditions of capital, and capital cannot come into being except on the foundation of the commodities including money.

All this is right, and some of this is given at the beginning of Chapter Four, but it is not in the two places which you were asked to compare. There, Marx makes the much simpler statements that most wealth under capitalism takes the form of commodities.

The commodities must acquire a twofold mode of existence which are use-value and exchange-value.

Again, at the beginning here Marx only states (in Contribution) that commodities have these two aspects in them. He argues in Section 3 of Chapter One that these inner aspects drive on to a double existence, with which he means the separation between commodities proper and money. But again, this is not what he says here. Marx cannot say everything at once, and we must be patient enough to follow him and understand what he says instead of rushing ahead.

A use-value can gratify specific needs whether of individual or productive consumption. A exchange-value must have acquire a definite form from its use-value. It must represent both the unity and the duality of use-value and exchange-value. So, its exchange value acquire this distinctive form of its use-value. The commodity is treated as an autonomous exchange-value by acting as money. Thus since wheat, is sold as commodity as money.

Again, now you are in Section 3 of Chapter One, but not in the assigned passage.

Marx never said that a diamond is not a use value!

This is in Capital right after the assigned passage.

Also, The diamond is of very rare occurrence on the earth's surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an average, a great deal of labor-time. With richer mines, the same quantity of labor would be embodied in more diamonds, and their value would fall. If man succeeded, in transforming carbon into diamonds, their value might fall below that of bricks. From these, the value of commodity, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productivity, of the labor which finds its realization within the commodity.

Now you are at the end of Section 2 I believe.

As use-values, commodities differ above all in the quality, while as exchange-values they can only differ in quantity, and therefore do not contain an atom of use-values.