| This question <48|41> overall <50|53> Martin: <34|86>. |
| Question 93: If the first Chapter is such a systematic discussion of value, why is it then called “Commodities” and not “Value”? |
| [51] Martin: Title ‘Commodities’ not ‘Value’ My answer with hindsight is that this is because value is an emergent property of commodity exchange consistent with complexity theory, and that Marx somehow sensed this. |
| In terms of Marx's own scientific method, which is most clearly set out in the Afterward to the Second German edition of Capital, it was necessary through inquiry to appropriate masses of factual detail, and understand the inner workings and interactions, and only then to present the essential features of the process in a systematic form. |
| Marx was against the imposition of broad sweeping ideas on the complexity of the actual data. Had he started off like many conventional economists with this approach, his description of “value” as an overarching principle might have been superficially very persuasive but could easily have fallen into some unacceptable generalisations, like the vague subjectivist version of value in modern economics which actually muddles up different things. |
| Marx saw the commodity as the essential irreducible unit of social labor in an intensive economic system with a proliferation of commodities as occurs in economies dominated by the capitalist mode of production. He therefore builds up his analysis on what he sees as clear materialist foundations, this basic unit, but viewed systematically from all its different angles and interactions. |
| In this way we can come to a materialist understanding of the contradictory but real nature of this strange substance that in association with individual exchange value, looks like blobs of ghostly jelly, except that it is totally invisible. In aggregate however it is totally real, and is the main determinant of capitalist dynamics at the highest level. To have started off Chapter One with Value as the title could have left an idealist rather than a materialist understanding in the minds of the reader. |
| Hans: I agree. Marx wanted to start with something tangible and concrete. Value springs to life and becomes independently active later, in capitalism, when it has wage labor to draw its life energy from. At the beginning it just one aspect of the commodity. |
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