| This question <519|536> overall <519|521> Dabears: <509|605>. graded A |
| Question 299: How does Marx know what commodities would say if they could speak? |
| [520] Dabears: Hans [271] names three steps in which Marx can determine what commodities would say if they could speak. 1) Marx concludes, based on how commodities interact with each other, that the value inside the commodities determines their relationships. 2) This interaction eludes objects, and 3) The commodities become confused and “misled by the fetish-like character of social relations in a commodity society.” The commodities are confused in their thinking that their use-value does not belong to them because their physical properties (which are their use values) are what makes us humans want them. Their value is created by humans through labor, not based on commodities' relationships with each other. |
| Hans: The commodities think: that what causes their relationships with each other is what they really are. That is why they come to the conclusion that their value belongs to them. |
| Your in-class answer took an entirely different approach, which is interesting as well. You wrote: |
| Marx knows what commodities would say because the commodity knows its value. The commodity knows the labor that has been put into it and “who” it is. |
| You are right, the memory how individual labor-time has been spent, which is part of social accounting, is attached to the product. This is how the product becomes a commodity. In a peasant family, everybody knows what everybody else has produced, because people see each other working. Therefore the products themselves do not have to play the additional social role of being bearers of value---despite the fact that human labor-power has been used for them. In commodity society, production is private and hidden from view. But due to private property, individuals are the jealous guardians of the things in their possession. This is why the social accounting of the labor-time performed goes through things. |
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