| This question <572|588> overall <579|584> Hans: <567|584>. |
| Exam Question 7: What is a commodity? Marx does not give the definition of a commodity but an analysis. How would you define the thing he analyzes? (The answer can be given in one sentence.) |
| [582] Hans: It is a thing, it is a social relation. The definition “a commodity is something produced for sale or exchange” is difficult to swallow. How can the purpose for which something was produced be part of the definition of this thing? What does that have to do with the thing itself? |
| Presumably that is why Snowy, in [566], added the sentence: |
| Once an object is exchanged or sold and has use-value to its user it is a commodity. |
| This pulls the definition into the more familiar territory of a clearly verifiable condition associated with the thing itself. Unfortunately this additional sentence is wrong. A commodity does not become commodity through the exchange, it is a commodity ever since its production. |
| The awkwardness of the definition comes from the fact that the thing which we call “commodity” is only the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg itself is a specific social relation of production, in which products are produced privately and have to pass through the market before they can be used. This relation does not take the form of a direct interaction between the producers but the form of a society-induced property of the products: the products can be sold, and even must be sold if their producers want to be rewarded for producing them. |
| In other words, the intention under which a commodity is produced enters the definition of the commodity because the commodity is more than a thing, it is a social relation. |
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