| This question <77|41> overall <78|80> Hans: <73|93>. |
| Question 38: Do things have use-value because people use them, or do people use things because they have use-value? |
| [79] Hans: tips. Tiny writes in [77]: |
| I believe items or products have value because of labor and use for what is needed. |
| Here it is important to be clear about the meaning of the word “value”. Marx says that in the practical activity of the members of capitalist society, the commodities have two aspects: either use-value (in the same way as Tiny is using the term) or exchange-value (meaning, the price of the commodity or what it otherwise can be exchanged for). What about the labor in the commodities? As long as we are not the producers of the commodity, this labor only affects us through its effect either on the use-value or on the price of the commodity. Apart from these effects of it, the labor itself does not enter the practical activity of the market participants. In the next sentence, Tiny does indeed cast doubt on it whether labor itself is relevant: |
| However, although they may the same amount of labor, two different products can be produced offering different outcomes for productivity. The example given was metal and how the amount can be different in two different regions or areas (rich and poor). |
| Next Tiny brings an example: |
| Lawn mower - people need them and use them, so they have value. If we didn't have lawn and lived in the desert, then they wouldn't have very much value at all. |
| Right. Nobody would need them. As far as the price is concerned, it would probably not be very low, because stores would not carry them and you would have to special-order them. And from the fact that lawn mowers are not needed in the desert does not follow that they suddenly don't cost any labor and resources to produce. Maybe that's why Tiny adds: |
| They would have some value because of the labor it took to produce them. |
| This example has an additional interesting aspect, considering that this class is taking place in Salt Lake City Utah. With only a couple of exceptions, all the class participants live in the Salt Lake City area, and I assume Tiny does too. Tiny, I have news for you: we do live in the desert. But water is incredibly cheap here, and everyone has a lawn which they have to water every day in the Summer. This goes to show again that it is the exchange-values of things which affect our behavior, not the underlying realities themselves. |
| Tiny continues: |
| Money is one of the things which people use because it does have use-value. |
| Huh? What is the use-value of a smelly flap of paper? It is one of the many contradictions in our society that everybody is after money although money itself is worthless. I hope that you will learn in this class to better recognize such contradictions instead of rationalizing them away with the fallacious argument: since everybody is after money, money must have a use-value. |
| At some level, Tiny is aware of this contradiction, because the rest of this paragraph contains the sentence: |
| Interesting enough, money may not require a lot time and energy (labor) to produce, it still can have equal or more value than an object that may have taken more time to produce. |
| That's all I wanted to say in response to Tiny's [77]. Thank you for reading. |
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