| This question <142|142> overall <141|143> Bubba: <1871|496>. graded B+ |
| Question 46: What would a Marxist say about the following argument: the exchange-value of an item is created through demand, not by the item itself. If nobody demands the item, it cannot be traded for anything. In other words, exchange-value is created by people wanting the item. |
| [142] Bubba: Exchange values and demand. Exchange values are not created through demand, according to Marx and the annotations. The biggest hint was the statement that “If two individuals decide to exchange things which are commonly not exchanged, this does not give these things exchange-value,” even though we can assume that those two individuals made the transaction because of each's demand. Another was that “exchange value resides in the commodity itself,” therefore, not in the individual's attachment to his commodity. |
| I suspect that this is leading into some form of the just-price doctrine that existed in early feudalism to show, for instance, that a hypothetical bread merchant (at least if he controls more food than he's selling and therefore keeps prices “artificially” high) in a famine is not justified in increasing the price of his bread to the point of his customers having to sell their homes to feed their families. The starving people would still make the transaction but only out of the fear of death and having no other alternatives. The fact that someone would sell his home for food for a few weeks does not change the fact that a home has a great deal more exchange-value than such a small amount of food: the merchant simply chose to ignore the exchange-values. If, however, the merchant had to go through a lot of work to get the food to sell it (and assuming he was not monopolizing), his high prices could be the legitimate appearance of his own labor in the product. |
| To summarize the answer for the argument: exchange-values are supply-determined (which boils down to labor), not demand-determined (which is unjust). |
| Hans: The only problem with your argument is your implication that exchange-values are supply-determined because this is more just. Please read my [111]. |
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