This question <53|47> overall <67|69> Hans: <67|70>.

Question 133: How does Marx's statement in 138:2/o that a commodity's value material “does not contain a single atom of physical matter” relate to his other statement in 177:3-4 that “no chemist has ever discovered exchange-value in pearl or diamond.” Do they say the same thing or something different?

[68] Hans: Capricious consumption fashions.   Marx wanted to stress with the above formulation that the value of a commodity does not come from its physical ingredients. Kitty [47] interprets this to mean that the value of a commodity has no connection with anything, not even labor time, but is arbitrarily assigned to the thing by society as its “social status.” It is easy to get this impression if one watches the succession of the latest hot commodities in a capitalist market, be it digital cameras, big screen TV's, hummers, or Wal-Mart junk. All this is driven by corporate profit seeking, and since profits come from the employees' unpaid labor, this is the link to labor which Marx postulated.

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