| This question <59|77> overall <59|62> Hans: <46|70>. |
| Question 38: Do things have use-value because people use them, or do people use things because they have use-value? |
| [60] Hans: Use-value debate. According to Gza [56], Marx argues as follows: |
| when ever someone uses something, the action of use presupposes a value that would logically have to preexist the initial use, or else why would the person pick up the object and try to use it. |
| In other words, people first think about it what they need, and then try the objects which might satisfy this need. This is not Marx. In Marx's view, people do not think first but act first. In his notes on Wagner, look at the pdf file wagner.pdf in our collection, p. 538:6/o, Marx writes: |
| They begin, like every animal, by eating, drinking, etc., that is not by “finding themselves” in a relationship, but actively behaving, availing themselves of certain things of the outside world by action, and thus satisfying their needs. (They start, then, with production.) By the repetition of this process the capacity of these things to “satisfy their needs” becomes imprinted on their brains; men, like animals, also learn “theoretically” to distinguish the outer things which serve to satisfy their needs from all other. At a certain stage of evolution, after their needs, and the activities by which they are satisfied, have, in the meanwhile, increased and further developed, they will linguistically christen entire classes of these things which they distinguished by experience from the rest of the outside world. |
| The name which people give to these things is “use-value” or “goods.” From this description it is very clear that the thing comes first, and only after humankind has established a practical relationship between themselves and the thing by using it, have they come up with the concept of use-value. |
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