| This question <119|131> overall <126|131> Reidar: <100|197-4>. |
| Question 86: Think of a real life situation (not necessarily related to what Marx is speaking about here) where someone says, “a pair of shoes is a pair of shoes,” or “a car is a car,” or “20 yards of linen are 20 yards of linen,” or “I am I” (compare footnote 18 to R144:1 below). Describe exactly what is meant by this phrase in the situation you chose. |
| [129] Reidar: “I am I” Any situation in which one is apathetic about the commodity which one purchases can be a good example for this question. I personally, am not particular about which brand or type of gasoline I buy. There are those companies and people which claim that a gasoline with a higher octane content will help my car run better, but I say ,“gasoline is gasoline”. In this statement I am inferring that the use value of the commodities involved are the same. Caren compared this likeness of use values to showing a commodity its own reflection in a mirror. I would not only compare the likeness of their use values, but point out that for me, the consumer, they contain the same use value, and it makes no difference to me which product I buy. They therefore do not contain differing values, neither product has a greater value than the other for me. |
| It is not only senseless to compare two products which contain the same use value, but a comparison cannot be made, because they contain the same value based on the abstract human labor that is “congealed” in their production. Footnote 18 points this out by explaining that exchanging commodities is really only exchanging the labor involved in those commodities. And Marx also says, “the value of the linen can therefore only be expressed relatively, i.e. in another commodity.” Marx hereby restates that commodities only contain an external value when they are compared to commodities which contain the same amount of social human labor. By containing like amounts of social human labor and having differing use values, these commodities have an exchange value. |
| In my first example re: gasoline, the different types of gasoline have no differing use values and therefore have no exchange value one with another. I would not exchange one gasoline for another. Therefore, gasoline is gasoline. |
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