This question <263|147> overall <130|132> Daru: <96|256>.

Question 63: The French economist Le Trosne wrote that the value of a thing consists in its exchange-proportions with other things. Does Marx agree with this, or how would he re-formulate this proposition to make it correct?

[131] Daru: Le Trosne doesn't know the difference.   Le Trosne's statment can be broken in two parts. He first mentions the “value of a thing” (and by ‘thing’ we here assume that he means a ‘commodity') and then defines it relative to the exchange proportions with other commodities. Marx would not agree with this for the simple reason that he defines the two concepts differently. Every time Marx uses the word ‘value’ he is referring to the congealed abstract labour expended on the commodity (Hans [105]). Le Trosne on the other hand suggests that the value of a commodity exists only because it can be exchanged with some other commodity/ies. Here to Marx, Le Trosne is only talking about the exchange value of the commodity and not its value.

The exchange value of a commodity for Marx is an outcome of some social relations that take pace in the marketplace. The exchange-value only provides producers with signals about the quantity of a commodity to be produced. For Marx, the value of a commodity makes it exchangeable (Hans [105]). From the last sentence it seems that Marx is agreeing with Le Trosne and alludes to the same type of connection that Le Trosne has developed between value and exchange value. It must be noted that Marx considers exchange value to be only a superficial manifestation of value. Marx believes that although value in its own right is a social relation stemming from production, he describes exchange-value as form of value (Annotations page 76). Also, I think for him value exists independent of exchange value of a commodity. The exchange value comes about only in the market place i.e. only through some social relations that govern trading of commodities. If a commodity is produced and consumed without being traded then it still contains value i.e. the congealed abstract labor inside it. What it would not have is an exchange value since it has not been put up for trading. Le Trosne's statment on the other hand implies that if commodities are not traded then they will not contain any value - an argument that Marx would not find palatable. In summary, exchange value comes about due to social relations taking place on the surface, whereas the value of a commoditiy exists due to the social relations that exist behind the surface phenomena. This is a crucial distinction to Marx that Le Trosne's statment completely seems to miss or ignore.

Hence, if Marx were to rephrase Le Trosne's statment he probably would have said ‘the value of a commodity exists because of the congealed abstract labour present inside it.’ or ‘the value of a commodity makes it exchangeable.’

Hans: Very good, just one quibble: if the product is never traded but consumed by the producer then it is not a commodity and has no value. The difference between Marx and Le Trosne is whether value is produced in production (Marx) or in the market (Le Trosne).

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