| This question <5|5> overall <4|6> Hidarang: <5|5>. |
| Question 36: Do things have use-value because people use them, or do people use things because they have use-value? |
| [5] Hidarang: Use-Value comes first. Marx says that Use-Value actualizes itself only by use or consumption, and that means the relation - considered as a property - is dormant in a thing and it needs to be consumed for actualization of the use-value. He asserts that something (use-value) exists before consumption. According to Marx's statement, relation between human and things exists before ‘use’. |
| Usefulness is relation between people and things. If things have use-value because people use them, there would exist only one-way relation making people subjects and things their objects. In that case, use-value never depends upon things. But usefulness as relation is reciprocal. We're not talking about trial use. Contacting something new, we may start to use it without any notion of use-value, but unless we find use-value in it, we will cease to use it. In other words, we may have a first trial use of a new thing. Then next turn belongs to the thing. It would tell us whether this relationship is good or not. We cannot compel the thing to have use-value. |
| We discover use-value of a thing by building relation with it (I don't know how), and if we come to use it, that's because there is use-value in it. |
| Hans: Very good, but there is another side to it too. In Notes on Wagner, [mecw24]538:6/o, Marx explains the origin of the linguistic term: “a good, article, use-value” as follows: first humans just manipulate nature in order to survive, and in this process they discover that certain things are more useful to them than others. Since they are not alone but always in a social context, it is important how these useful things are controlled and by whom, this is why they start talking about them and invent the generic name “good” for them. “A good” is synonymous to “a use-value”. |
| Therefore, while you are right that people use things because they are use-values and not the other way round, people are calling things “use-values” because they are using them. |
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