[2005fa:37]

This question <35|40> overall <36|39> Thugtorious: <36|53>. (graded A–)

Question 43: Joseph, who lives in a capitalist society, regularly swaps his wife with the wife of his friend. Does this mean Joseph's wife has exchange-value in capitalism?

[37] Thugtorious: In response to BonzoIsGod's comment [34] and Hans' reply [35], let's assume that we do live in a bourgeois society where prostitution of this type is socially acceptable. This is not a far reaching assumption because in a purely market based system without regulations, there would most certainly be a market for sex. However, even in this type of derived system, “wife-swapping” would still not have an exchange-value. Marx says in the first chapter of Capital that “if the use-values were not qualitatively different forms of useful labour, they would be absolutely incapable of confronting each other as commodities. Coats cannot be exchanged for coats, one use-value cannot be exchanged for another of the same kind” (Fowkes, p 132). Therefore, one wife cannot be exchanged for another wife due to their homogeneous nature and comparable use-values (even though these “commodities” may not seem homogeneous because every human is different, they are just as homogeneous as two coats made by two seperate tailors). Now, if Joseph (the husband) offered up his wife in exchange for another man's automobile, that would be an entirely different argument.

Hans: I don't think the homogeneity of wives is the issue here, but you have a point: a society is thinkable in which wife-swapping is commonplace, but where it is not possible to trade wives for other commodities. In such a society Joseph's wife would have an exchange-value with respect to other wives, but not with respect to other commodities.

This is a plausible example of a class of services (“wives”) which takes an intermediate form between complete lack of exchangeability and full exchangeability for all other commodities.

However you did not quite interpret it right: it is not the homogeneity of wives that prevents them from being traded for goods other than wives, but perhaps the society's resistance against the slide of such an exchange-ritual into prostitution pure and simple. Indeed, your suggestion that wives are homogeneous might be considered offensive by your conversation partners.