| This question <65|77> overall <67|69> Hans: <64|74>. |
| Question 75: Why can commodities not express their values in their own use values? |
| [68] Hans: Analysis of Ayn's answer Although I am giving here a sentence-by-sentence criticiam of Ayn's [63], I should say that overall I liked this submission a lot. Ayn's first sentence is: |
| The definition of a commodity is the combination of a “natural form and a value-form.” |
| This is already the form of the commodity which follows from its definition, which is at this place, see p. 41 of my Notes: |
| The commodity is, since the moment it is made, something twofold, use value and value, the product of useful labor and the congelation of abstract labor. |
| Ayn's next sentence brings another definition, which is much closer to being right: |
| The commodity itself is an embodiment of a natural value, its natural use value derived from its materials, and it is also a representation of the value-form, the labor derived value. |
| Again Ayn should not have put the form, value-form, into the definition, since at this point Marx tries to derive the value-form from the definition of the commodity. I would re-write Ayn's second sentence as follows: |
| The commodity is an embodiment of a natural worth, its use value derived from its materials, and it is also produced in a social context in which all labor counts as equal human (abstract) labor. |
| After this definition, Ayn's next sentence follows seamlessly: |
| The definition of commodity requires that it have a double form: the congelation of both abstract and concrete labor. The concrete labor is that which actually transforms the use-values of the materials into an exchangeable form. However, it is the abstract labor which allows the commodities to relate to one another on the market, namely, to “speak” to one another. |
| I like this passage a lot, but again I would re-write it as follows: |
| The definition of commodity requires that it have a double form: it is the congelation of both abstract and concrete labor, and both aspects of it must be made visible and socially recognized. The concrete labor is that which actually transforms the natural properties of the materials into a useful form. It is therefore easy to see that a commodity has useful labor in it. But how does it show that the commodities contain abstract labor? It is the abstract labor which allows the commodities to relate to one another on the market, namely, to “speak” to one another. |
| Now Question 75 is asking: why can one not simply say: since the commodity has a use value, we know not only that the commodity contains concrete labor, but also that it contains abstract labor, since every concrete labor is the expenditure of abstract labor? |
| The rest of Ayn's contribution might perhaps be useful for answering this question, but it confused the expression of value and the determination of value, consequently it mixes Marx's arguments in Sections 1 and 2 with those in Section 3. In order not to perpetuate this confusion, I will not bring it here. |
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