| This question <170|170> overall <137|139> Snowman: <48|203>. |
| Question 107: Repeat in your own words the three peculiarities of the equivalent form. |
| [138] Snowman: The three peculiarities of equivalent form The first peculiarity is that in exchange economies the form of notation that any one value takes. What is odd about this is that we express the value of an object in terms of other objects different from the original object itself. The value of any one object as it relates to another is socially determined, and not based on any physical property. values are then assigned not based on distinguishable properties but those socially assigned and not directly easily related to the object. For example my bicycle has many physical properties that can be compared in relation to other objects, maybe a skate-board, that also have physical properties. These physical properties include weight, mass, volume, and size. So physically speaking the bike may have a height value of four skate-boards, in other words the bike is four skate boards tall, yet this has nothing to do with the exchange value of either product, it is only the Physical “equivalent values.” The value, and its magnitude, is different in that it is socially determined, or determined by the various relations that individuals keep with the object of value as a whole. In other words it is determined by all the relations of the society and can not by reduced to any one individual relation. |
| The second peculiarity is the statement that “concrete labor is the expression of abstract labor.” That is the labor used in production of a product is its concrete labor yet the abstract labor, or the labor that will be used to determine its price, is based on the socially determined labor value given the various factors of production. For example in my pocket I have a wallet whose value on the market is four dollars based on the abstract human labor used to produce the average wallet of its kind, though this particular wallet may have required more or less time to produce. The value of the wallet is the average of all the specific labor hours required to produce all the individual wallets and it is this average that is known as the abstract labor. |
| The third peculiarity is derived from the second, that is all individual labor that produces a commodity is also social labor. That is in that act of producing any individual commodity that has value, that value is determined socially and not by the individual producing it, nor is the value determined by the type of labor, say frame building in case of the bike, the value is instead determined by its social value in terms of abstract labor hours. Therefor even as the labor is performed individually it contains “immediate social form.” |
| Hans: Your grade suffered because you had the wrong concepts of value and of abstract labor. |
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