| This question <44|44> overall <51|53> Hans: <51|67>. |
| Question 188: Marx says that the commodity whose value is to be expressed, counts immediately only as a use-value, and the commodity in which that value is to be expressed, counts immediately only as exchange-value. Isn't it just the opposite? The linen, whose value is to be expressed, counts for the linen weaver as exchange-value, and the coat, in which the value of the linen is expressed, counts for the linen weaver as use-value. |
| [52] Hans: Three fallacies. MissingMiddleToe brings some Marx quotes and his [44] is a well-argued answer. I did not give him an A because he does not seem to have understood the earlier reading assignments, but he certainly deserves the A- I gave him. Despite this good grade I have to be very critical of what he says. I will point out three fallacies: |
| (1) What Toe initially says about use-values is right: things usually get their use-values through labor, and the use-value only depends on the thing itself, not on other things. Then later he says: |
| 20 yards of linen has a use-value because it contains a certain quantity of labor. |
| This is no longer accurate. It is the same reductionist fallacy as to say that you owe everything you have to your parents, because you wouldn't be alive without your parents. The linen has its use-value because of its physical properties, and how it got these properties is irrelevant. |
| (2) Then Toe says the following about exchange-value: |
| Exchange value is not contained within a good. In order for a commodity to have an exchange value, it must be compared to another object of value for which it could be exchanged. |
| This is the view that exchange-value is purely relative. It is not something you can attribute to the linen alone, it can only spring into existence when you are talking about two or more commodities: |
| Linen, however does not contain any exchange-value until you introduce something to compare it to. |
| To see what is wrong with this argument you have to read p. 127:1 in Marx, discussed on pp. 21/22 in the Annotations. Toe's argument is wrong because there are simply too many exchange relations. |
| Let me give an illustration which I haven't used before. If you live in a society in which each person has sex with only one other person at a time, then you are justified to say that sex is a relationship issue, it probably even has to do with love. But if you live in a society in which everybody has sex with everybody else, then sex no longer is the expression of a relationship, but the manifestation of the sex drive inherent in everybody. |
| Exchange-relations are far too promiscuous to be relationship issues. This is how Marx comes to argue that exchange-relations are the expression of something inside the commodities. This something is their abstract labor content or, in Marx's more precise terminology, their value. |
| (3) Here is a third fallacy in Toe's answer: |
| The linen weaver looks at the amount of labor in the linen and compares it to that of the coat. They then reach a level of exchange (20 yards of linen=1 coat) that is backed up by the market. |
| This is not how the labor theory of value works. The linen weaver does not know how much labor is in the coat. She knows how much labor is in her linen, and what the use-value of the coat is. This is the information underlying her exchange decision. If she is willing to pay a too high price for coats, tailors will notice and more labor will be allocated into making coats. The proportionality of prices and labor content is therefore enforced on the supply side, not on the demand side. |
| Toe's basic arguments are therefore wrong, and you better forget what he wrote. Sorry about that. |
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