| This question <82|98> overall <83|85> Hans: <81|85>. |
| Question 60: Labor power creates products. The value of the products comes from the value of labor power, and the use value from the use value of labor power. Is this a correct rendering of Marx's theory? |
| [84] Hans: Commodities: monks or angels? Pippy is right when she writes in [82]: |
| The statement in question 60 is incorrect. |
| Since Question 60 uses the concept “value of labor power”, it is appropriate that her explanations are given in a paragdigm in which is labor power is a commodity. In other words, Pippy uses things which are described in Chapter Six. In Chapter One, Marx already introduces the concept of labor power, but labor power is not yet a commodity. Therefore, what comes now is a preview of Chapter Six: |
| The capitalist purchases labor power to create commodities which will have a greater magnitude of value than the value of the inputs to produce the commodity. The laborer sells his labor power to the capitalist at its value, the amount of socially necessary abstract labor time embodied in the necessaries that refuel the worker. As the worker labors he creates value, |
| So far it is good. But Pippy's next sentence brings an unfortunate analogy: |
| he acts as the surrogate father for the capitalist with capital as the womb. |
| And I thought Pippy Longstocking was speaking here! In childbearing the mother is doing all the work, while the father can at most ask every now and then: how is our baby doing, darling? In the factory, the worker is doing all the work, while the capitalist then claims ownership afterwards. |
| His labor power is consumed in the production process, ergo it is the use value of labor power which creates the value we see embodied in the commodity. |
| This is right, and this holds true whether the worker is a wage laborer or an whether he or she is an independent producer for the market. Pippy continues: |
| Furthermore, the latter part of the statement “and the use value from the use of labor power”, is also false. |
| Yes, strictly speaking one can call it false, because it is not only labor (the use value of labor power) but also nature which together produce the use value. But this is not what Pippy means. She writes: |
| The use value of the commodity has already been abstracted at the onset of its confrontation with other commodities as a valuable being in its social context. It has shed its natural properties like a gentleman who has removed his hat upon entering a room with proper company. The commodity as a social creature abandons its individual qualities when it sits in relation to other commodities. |
| I do not quite agree with all of this, although there is a lot of truth in it, and I do like the analogy of the hat. I would rather say that a commodity is like a monk, it is only concerned with its value-soul and considers its profane use-value body as burdensome and troublesome. But that a monk prays all the time does not mean that he is already in heaven. The commodity has both sides, for better or for worse, and they fight with each other. Therefore it is legitimate to talk about the use value of a commodity and to ask where it comes from. |
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