| This question <77|88> overall <86|88> Bresid: <2|251>. graded A– |
| Question 114: What is the difference between the statement: “a commodity is a use-value and a product of labor” and the statement: “a commodity is a use-value and the congelation of abstract labor”? |
| [87] Bresid: The difference between product of labor and abstract labor. Che's explanation of the first sentence is: |
| “A commodity is a use-value through useful labor.” |
| I interpret the first sentence differently. First I must state that the use value of a commodity, a car for instance, is a heap of many different use values assembled together to create a new use-value. A commodity doesn't necessarily get its use-value through labor, but gets its value through labor. There is a difference. A diamond (uncut for simplicity) doesn't become useful to society because of the miners' labor to abstract it from the earth, that labor determines the value of the commodity. |
| I understand the first sentence of the question to mean that a commodity has two parts: its use-value, and its product of labor. |
| The commodity's use-value, as stated above, is a congealed group of use-value. For a car: Steel, plastic, glass etc. all slapped together in the right way to give the use values of an automobile. Both the first and second statement use the word use-value the same, so I will concentrate on the labor side of the statements. |
| The product of labor just means that somebody put all the use-values together in the right way to produce a car. The “somebody” above doesn't clarify any number of laborers, machines used, the education for that somebody etc. Product of labor just mentions that it was made. |
| The second part of the question differs only in that the commodity is a congelation of abstract labor rather than a product of labor. My interpretation of “congelation of abstract labor” reduces the above mentioned product of labor to its most basic form. Abstract labor reduces all skilled labor, educated labor, machines used by laborers, and all other parts of labor to its crudest form. Marx describes this crude labor as unskilled labor. So, congealed labor is the basic unskilled labor compounded by all the factors that go into the product of labor. |
| The second statement differs from the first in the explanation of the labor side of the commodity. The second reduces the factors of labor to unskilled labor, while the first only mentions that labor is part of the commodity. |
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