| This question <37|57> overall <46|48> Bandit: <330-50|73>. |
| Question 49: Is the magnitude of value of a commodity determined by the quantity of abstract labor necessary to produce it, or by the quantity of other commodities against which it can be exchanged? |
| [47] Bandit: value of commodity determined by labor The magnitude of value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of abstract labor necessary to produce it and not the quantity of other commodities against which it can be exchanged. |
| Marx measures the value of a commodity by the amount of labor time that has been spent producing and creating the commodity. However, that does not necessarily mean that if a certain commodity took months to create that it is necessarily better than another commodity that took only weeks to create. This reason is explained by Marx's idea that the labor time to produce the commodity is not the labor time that one person uses to create the commodity. Instead, it is the average amount of time required by society to create the commodity. |
| The quantity of other commodities for which a commodity can be exchanged -- the exchange value -- is a good measurement of a commodity's value but not the best measurement. However, the exchange value of a product may differ from one moment to the next or from place to place. No one can ever be totally sure what the exact exchange value will be. One could argue that the exchange value may not represent the true value of a commodity -- it could be dependent upon the circumstances at the time of the exchange. Therefore, a shirt could be exchanged for two pairs of pants. That represents the exchange value of that shirt may be two pairs of pants. This holds true if the shirt is worth two pairs of pants to you; but if the shirt is worth four pairs of pants, than it was not a good exchange value for you. However, a month later that same shirt may not even trade for one pair of pants -- the exchange value has already gone down in a short period of time. |
| Consequently, Marx argues that the quantity of labor is a more reliable method to judge the value of a commodity than the quantity of other commodities for which it can be exchanged. |
| Hans: I like it that you did not just give me a Marx quote, saying this is so because Marx said so, but composed a coherent argument yourself. Your answer has a misunderstanding which I will try to clear up in my [57]. I think had you read the other submissions about Question 49 you would perhaps not have made this error. |
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