| This question <24|22> overall <27|29> Hans: <25|35>. |
| Question 33: The use value of a commodity is the utility one gets from using it; the exchange value is the indirect utility one gets from using those things one can trade the commodity for. Right or wrong? |
| [28] Hans: Use value, exchange value, and utility There is a subtle difference between the concept of use value as Marx uses it, and the concept of utility from modern economics. Marx's use value is, as I wrote in the Annotations on the first page, the “menu of possible uses of the commodity.” It is attached to the commodity, not its user. The subjectivist point of view taken by modern utility theory, which reduces everything to how you feel about it, deprives you of the theoretical tools to understand the imbalances in the distribution of very real resources and power in capitalist society. |
| Flasse [22] overlooks this subtle difference, while Tochi's formulation |
| Use-value, is the quality that determines the use inherent in a commodity |
| in [24] is right on. At the end of this sentence (not quoted here) Tochi mentions the labor that went into providing the use value. This is an irrelevant consideration. When looking at the use value of a commodity, the labor that went into it is forgotten, the commodity only counts as a physical object. |
| Now let's go to the exchange value part of this Question. Flasse writes: |
| Exchange value is likely to change as a result of social factors, i.e. where you live and the circumstances of the exchange. An empty soda can will give you 10c in return in Michigan, while it is worthless in Utah. |
| If this were the main aspect of exchange value, then exchange value should not be considered a property of the commodity, but a property of the circumstances of the exchange. Marx considers exchange value, rightly in my view, as a property of the commodity, with the circumstances of the exchange possibly distorting the exchange value, but usually only temporarily. |
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