| This question <9|3> overall <9|11> Hans: <9|11>. |
| Question 57: Is value the result of abstract labor? |
| [10] Hans: Question from an Observer One of our outside observers sent me the following message: |
| Hans, |
| I don't see the need for a notion of “inherent exchange value.” If, for example, I exchange grain for chickens, why would a calculation of some inherent value of grain and chickens come into it? You make the best deal you can under the circumstances, whether you are a capitalist or a socialist or whether you are two individuals or two nations. Is this not so? |
| Yes, I agree: buyers and sellers on the market do not consider the inherent value of the commodities they trade. They simply make the best deals they can under the circumstances. But now the question is: do the exchange proportions the traders arrive at only depend on the circumstances or the traders themselves (in which case exchange value would be something purely relative), or do the exchange proportions have something to do with the commodities traded (i.e., the commodities contain some kind of inherent exchange value). Marx, of course, argues the latter and then goes on to investigate which aspect of the commodity is responsible for its exchange value. |
| BTW, outside observers are invited to join into the discussion just as everybody else, by specifying the number of the study question to which their contribution refers. |
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