| This question <912|233> overall <186|214> Demosthenes: <1217|217>. graded A |
| Question 128: If a commodity is only produced because of its value, why did Marx not say that commodities come to the world in the form of values? |
| [213] Demosthenes: The Commodity is Born. To begin, a reminder: what Marx did say, was that “Commodities come into the world in the form of use-values or articles, as iron, linen, corn etc. (138:1).” |
| Hans, in his Annotations, discusses the comparison between the birthing of the commodity and the birth of a human baby. Let us take this discussion a little deeper in order to answer the question at hand. |
| We live in a very complex and developed society. When a child comes into the world, however, it has no awareness of the twinings and bindings of the social network around itself. It understands, at least instinctively, the basic requirements for life. It knows hunger, warmth, pain. Not until the child grows does it begin to learn of the workings of the society in which it lives. It eventually will become a working part of this society, and ultimately one who will pass this social construct on to a future generation. |
| It is true that in our present social situation, the commodity is only produced because of its value. It does not provide a use-value for the producer, only the hope that it will provide some use-value for another, and by doing so will procure for the producer the things of which he stands in need. |
| But what if we were able to unknot the economic entanglement in which we are viewing the commodity? As an infant only understands its fundamental needs for sustaining life, such is the pure purpose of the commodity: to fulfill those needs. Only when we place this article in the framework of the myriad of commodities in the world around it does the concept of exchange-value come into play. Thus, the commodity comes into the world simply as a use-value, and grows into an exchange value as it realizes its place in the sphere around it. |
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