| This question <161|161> overall <157|158-1> Pepper: <67|176-1>. |
| Question 241: Marx depicts commodities as conscious beings which are eager to be exchanged, but do not care about the use value of the commodity they are exchanged for. Why are commodities, which are inanimate things, depicted here as beings with their own will, and why do they not care about the use value of the other commodity? |
| [158] Pepper: Commodities With Wills In the Annotations, it is stated that people find themselves privately owning certain commodities and lacking others. They must exchange their commodities to attain and satisfy their needs. And through the exchange value it is said that commodities relate to each other and it is in this exchange process that people need to take both use value and exchange value into consideration. |
| Marx writes about the hiatus between personal goals and social contraints or possibilites, as stated in the Annotations. Marx writes: |
| [The exchange process] is a social process entered into by the mutually independent individuals, but they enter into it only as commodity owners. What they are for each other is given by their commodities, and thus they appear in fact only as the conscious carriers of the exchange process. |
| The owners are just carrying the process. The commodites are the ones actually dragging their owners along with them to the market. The people are just representatives of commodities -- commodity owners. However, it is noted that the personal and social dimensions of individual activity do not form a very harmonious entity. |
| There are two opposite goals that a commodity producer seeks when taking his commodity to the market. He wants to get the use value that best fits him and he wants to realize the value of his commodity which he is exchanging. These are said to be two different goals from two different agents. One is of the producer and the other is of the commodity. It is the commodity producer who wants the use value that will best fit him and it is the commodity, which is the social context, that is interested in realizing its value. It is not interested in the use value of other commodities; it is only interested in its own value and of other commodities. Like stated above, it is the producer interested in the use value that he can get out of it. It is said to have its own will because the market relations between commodities are beyond the control of the traders. |
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