| This question <75|106> overall <94|96-1> Ayn: <63|97>. |
| Question 95: What does Marx mean by the remark in the footnote to R144:1, that humans are not born with a mirror in their hands? |
| [96] Ayn: Fichtean Will Revisited (Bride's Head, etc.) If we believe Skinner to be legitimate and agree that man is behaviorist, then we can conclude that all of our developed qualities (those we are not born with) are based on other's reactions to us. These reactions are similar to the abstract labor put into the production of a commodity. It is the combination of action and reaction that refine the individual just as it is the labor put into the commodity which refines its use-value. |
| Just like the “pre”commodity, man is born with innate, natural qualities, but in the end, man is a product of his environment. The ingredients of a commodity have innate qualities, but it is the abstract labor put into its production which give the article use value. The environment (other's reactions, positive and/or negative) acts like abstract labor, thus refining man, allowing (or in some cases forcing) man to fully develop those qualities, thus giving him social use value (the ability to function in society and to make a valid contribution). This allows man to “speak” to other men in an exchange process (everyday living and social interaction) just as commodities are able to “speak” to each other on the exchange market. It is this point which Gonzalez [75] was correct in relating man to commodities in the sense that man reflects the other's “social use value” in his reactions to him, just as commodities reflect their use values on the market through comparison of their abstract labor. |
| Man is not born with a mirror in his hand because it is the effect of other's reactions to him that mold him and he is reflected as the end result of their reactions; commodities are not born reflecting their use value, but reflect it only in social interaction with other commodities. |
| Hans: You are positing too much of a continuum between use value and exchange value. You are right to talk about refining a commodity's use value by placing it into a social context, but as you say yourself, this social context may be other's reactions, which do not necessarily go through the exchange, and all this has very little to do with abstract labor. Abstract labor is an impoverished method of socialising production, and the exchange process is not the only method to socialize production. Marx meant his analysis to be a criticism of capitalism. |
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