| This question <54|63> overall <60|62> Hans: <60|62>. |
| Question 140: Assume there are 51 butchers in a barter society, and none of them is a chess player. Does this mean that the game of chess is not part of the Expanded form of value of meat in this society? (I don't know the answer myself.) |
| [61] Hans: Chess-Playing Butchers Josef [54] gives three arguments in favor of chess being part of the Expanded form of value nevertheless. I agree with this conclusion and with two of Josef's three arguments. |
| First Josef quotes Marx who says quite explicitly in the text that every commodity other than the linen is a “particular equivalent” of linen. |
| Then Josef brings the argument that a chess set contains labor whether or not the butchers want it. This is the argument I don't agree with. Not everything that contains labor is automatically in the equivalnet form of value. An equivalent is not merely something which contains labor, but moreover something which other commodities use to express their value in, something which counts as the incarnation of value. In practical terms, it is something which you can use to buy things with (Marx calls this “directly exchangeable”). |
| Josef's misunderstanding might have been fostered by a translation error in the Vintage edition. In 156:1 the Vintage translation says |
| Each commodity, such as coat, tea, iron, etc., figures in the expression of value of the linen as an equivalent, hence as a physical object possessing value. |
| “Physical object possessing value” is the translation of “Wertding”, which Moore and Aveling translated as “thing that is value”. This is a much better translation, and it is to be meant literally: it is not merely a thing that has value but a thing that is the incarnation of value. |
| In the third paragraph Josef says: even if the butchers do not like to play chess now, maybe they will some time in the future. I think this goes in the right direction. I would argue as follows: say the artisan making the chess sets wants meat, but none of the butchers wants a chess set. But perhaps the butchers can use something different which this same artisan makes, or there will be a way to involve a third party in a circular trade. If this is not possible, then the society is so large and division of labor so deep that direct barter is completely out of the question. Marx's assumption that all commodities are particular equivalents is therefore justified by the assumption of societies small and simple enough that direct barter is feasible. |
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