| This question <10|10> overall <13|15> Hans: <11|17>. |
| Question 41: Joseph, who lives in a capitalist society, regularly swaps his wife with the wife of his friend. Does this mean Joseph's wife has exchange-value in capitalism? |
| [14] Hans: Bank robbers and the exchange-value of gold. PDubya gives a good answer in [10], but I get the feeling that PDubya is not convinced the Annotations frame this issue in the right way. The Annotations write: A use-value has exchange-value [only] if it is commonly traded for other use-values. PDubya (and quite a few others before him in the archives) apparently think that this additional clause prevents the wives from having exchange-value. Without this clause they would have exchange-value. |
| Against this I am trying to argue that this additional clause is not something extra thrown in, but a natural requirement if you think of exchange-value in the right way. Let me put it this way: |
| If you own something which has exchange-value, then you can use it in two different ways: you can either consume it, or you can trade it away. This is a true fact about exchange-value, but it is not the definition of exchange-value! Taking this as the definition is called “instrumentalism”, related to the anthropocentrism I mentioned in [3]. |
| If you use this wrong definition, then it follows of course that Joseph's wife has exchange-value for him, because he can “benefit” from her in two different ways. But if you use a real definition of exchange-value, i.e., one which locates the forces that make things happen, then you see that Joseph has this double “benefit” because he made a special agreement with his friend, not because his wife has exchange-value. |
| Here is another try: If Joseph's wife had exchange-value, then it would be dangerous for Joseph to go through the park alone at night. Someone might kill him so that he can now have the double benefit from using or exchanging his wife. (Here I am trying to drive home the point that it does not depend on Joseph's decision whether his wife has exchange-value, but the exchange-value of Joseph's wife persists even after Joseph's death.) |
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