| This question <37|336> overall <37|39> Hans: <32|42>. |
| Question 87: We know now that value consists of abstract labor. What does exchange-value consist of? |
| [38] Hans: Social Ontology. This was a difficult question. Marx himself gives the hint to an answer in 164:1 where he says, not specifically but more by implication, that exchange-value consists of social relations. |
| Well, that is better than saying exchange-value consists of the commodities which enter the exchange. Which would be like saying marriage consists of brides (-- if you are a man, or of grooms, if you are a woman). |
| But value is a social relation too. What justification does Marx have to say that value consists of labor? To answer this we must make ourselves aware that there are different kinds of social relations. Many social relations take the form of relationships between different individuals. Such social relations are often called “interpersonal” relations. But this is not the only kind of social relation. The language which we all speak is also a social relation, so are manners of polite behavior or traffic laws. They are not interpersonal relations, but they still constitute a social backdrop for our individual activity. Value is this other kind of social relation. |
| An interpersonal relation represents the social permission, expectation, or duty to behave in certain ways towards other people, otherwise there will be consequences. The value of a commodity is the social compulsion to treat this commodity in such a way as if the labor needed to produce it was still present as a non-physical substance inside this thing. One must be very rich before one no longer has to make this calculation with everything one does. |
| Therefore one might answer this question as follows: value is a social relation that takes the form of an immaterial substance inside each commodity which all members of a commodity-producing society are forced to recognize---and according to the LTV, this substance is nothing but the echo of the labor-power needed to produce this commodity. Exchange-value is an interpersonal relationship which allows people to buy and sell commodities, or bargain over their price, or withhold purchases until the price drops, etc. Marx's thesis that exchange-value is the form of value means that we have to do this because these things contain labor, and our shopping trips and budget considerations are the method through which society allocates the labor available for production. |
| (Of course, there are many indicators that this allocation is not always socially desirable, from the fact that many cannot have medical care or cannot go to school because they cannot afford it, to the fact that the environmentally most damaging activities are not only not discouraged but even subsidized by our tax money, etc.) |
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