| This question <88|121> overall <112|114> Hans: <110|116>. |
| Question 79: Why can commodities not express their values in their own use values? |
| [113] Hans: Alf's and MsMarx's answers Although Alf's [83] starts out with a wrong statement, it gives at the end a good answer to the Question. But first the wrong statement: |
| Although it was produced through labor, the value of a commodity does not exist until the product is introduced into the market. |
| Alf confuses here value with value form, something which is easy to do and often done. The value already exists, because the labor has been spent on the good, but the introduction into the market is necessary to “realize” the value, to induce this labor into a social context. Alf's next sentence is somewhat contradictory, this contradiction coming from Alf's confusion of the categories: |
| The market is what gives a commodity labor value, but only if the product is accepted socially. |
| Did you notice the contradiction? How can the market give labor value? It can at best give market value. Only labor can give labor value. But the market can give this labor the proper social form. |
| Now let us go to that part of Alf's submission where he gives the right answer to Question 79. Actually, I have another quibble with the first sentence here. Excuse me that I am so pedantic, I don't mean it personally. Let's read this sentence: |
| Products must always be integrated into a real social context, or in other words, as Marx says, must take the form of a commodity. |
| Only in very particular kinds of economies, those based on commodity production, will this integration into a social context go through the market. It is a very impoverished, one-dimensional link between the different labors; for instance it cannot deal very well with the issue of exhaustible resources (I just wrote [109] about this). |
| The rest of Alf's submission is exactly the right answer to Question 79: |
| All products must pass a test of whether or not the labor time exhausted on them is socially necessary. Therefore, commodities cannot express their own use values, this must be done through social acceptance in the market as a valuable commodity. This is only done by the market, or through the market socially, and not by the commodity itself!! |
| Now let us go to MsMarx's [88]. Instead of directly tackling this one specific Question, MsMarx briefly recapitulates Marx's development at the beginning of Section 3. This is appreciated, such a bird's eye view can be a greatly help clearing things up. I won't reproduce MsMarx's first and second paragraphs here. They are basically right, although the second paragraph, in my view, makes a claim which it does not back up sufficiently. This claim is: since the commodity has a twofold character, it needs a double form. My objection, which gave rise to the present Question 79, is: I grant you that the form must be a reflection of the inner character, but why can both aspects of the commodity not be reflected by the same form? |
| In her third paragraph, MsMarx's discourse unravels a bit. Marx's argument is very abstract, and if one argues so abstractly, it is difficult to keep track of what one is talking about. MsMarx writes: |
| Commodities must take the form of a commodity by becoming a social product. |
| I would see it just the other way around: Commodities must become a social product by taking the form of a commodity. MsMarx's next sentence kind of says this: |
| This social form is manifested in that products must be sold on the market and in this way they pass the test whether the labor time spent on them was socially necessary. |
| The sentence that follows again argues in exactly the opposite direction than I would argue: |
| Since commodities need this double form, even if a commodity had the highest quality use value, that doesn't mean the commodity is socially accepted as a social product. |
| The concrete economic fact MsMarx refers to in the second half of the sentence, which I will rephrase as: “Even if a commodity had the highest quality use value, that doesn't mean the commodity is socially acceptable as a social product (because there may not be a need for this use value)”, is not the consequence of this double form, but I would see it as the reason why the commodity needs a double form. But perhaps MsMarx is aware of a deeper reason for the necessity of a double form than this? |
| Finally, I cannot make anything of the last sentence in MsMarx's submission: |
| The social form of the commodity is an expression of the value of the commodity. |
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