| This question <122|122> overall <123|127> Hans: <121|132>. |
| Question 182: Why is a commodity in the equivalent form directly exchangeable with the commodity in the relative value form? |
| [125] Hans: Central conflation. It is obvious that Obi studied the assigned readings carefully. He or she will get a good grade, although I am going to say that the answer [122] is wrong. But thoughtful pieces of work like Obi's give me the opportunity to say things in explanation of Marx's text which I would otherwise not have thought of. |
| In the text before the presently assigned readings, Marx argued as follows: On the market everybody acts as if the most diverse commodities were equal and only capable of quantitative differences -- because we use money as a common denominator for them all. This can only then be such a pervasive and universally accepted way of doing things if these things are indeed somehow equal. What is the internal equality in the things which is reflected by their market prices? Marx's answer is that it is the labor content. |
| In Section 3 of chapter One, which we have begun to read now, he is asking the reverse question. He assumes that the relations which the things have on the market are indeed the reflections of their labor content, and he is wondering how this leads to the development of money, of a thing with the curious property that it is desired by everybody and can be used to buy everything. |
| I.e., earlier, he went from money (or from exchange-value, which amounts to the same thing) to labor, and now he is going from labor to money. |
| Your difficulties in following this new turn in Marx's argument comes perhaps from the fact that the first leg of Marx's argument did not convince you. And how can it be convincing if it is in contradiction to everything you have learned about the capitalist economy. Only a tiny minority of modern economists try to explain prices by labor; most of them explain prices by utility, i.e., by use-value. |
| If Obi writes: |
| two commodities ... both have some form of ‘congealed’ value in their natural form, with peculiar value attributable to each. This natural form of value gives both commodities a common platform from which equivalence and relativity relations originate. |
| then I think he or she means that both commodity owners value the use-values of their commodities, and this is the basis on which they can come to an exchange. |
| It is true that each commodity has two aspects: it has a use-value and it has an exchange-value. The conclusion which not only Obi but all of mainstream economics draws from this is that use-value and exchange-value must be two sides of the same thing. This is an error which has been given the name “central conflation.” |
| The most famous examples of central conflation are the conflation between individual and society. If you think that the society you live in is just another aspect of your individuality, and you as an individual are an spect of the society you live in, then you are forever locked into the place which society has assigned to you and have no chance of emancipating or liberating yourself. Marx makes a big distinction between individual and society. He says: society is not us, on the contrary, society is an alien force suppressing us and we as individuals have the responsibility to take control of and change our social relations. |
| The same distinction must be made with the commodities. The attachment which we have to the use-values of our commodities is an individual relation, and the exchange-value of the commodities is a social relation. These two have very little to do with each other, and at the beginning it is best to say that they have nothing to do with each other. If you like your iPod, this does not mean you have to like capitalism. |
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