| This question <11|25> overall <14|17> Stuart: <36|36>. |
| Question 54: The use-value of a commodity is the utility one gets from using it; the exchange-value is the utility one gets from using those things one can trade the commodity for. Right or wrong? |
| [15] Stuart: Use-Value, Exchange-Value and Utility. Both sentences are wrong. |
| The use value describes the material property of the commodity which makes it useful, not the utility it may provide. However the use-value is similar to utility in the sense it is subjective and is a relationship between the commodity and its user. For example a book's use-value will most likely differ between a literate and an illiterate individual. |
| The exchange-value of a commodity is independent of both its usefulness or the utility it may provide. In contrast to use-value, exchange value is not subjective in nature and the value has no relationship between its usefulness and the user. The exchange value is the social relationship that allows commodities to be traded for other commodities or money, but at the same time its value is not socially determined. At this point in the readings the exchange value is somewhat mysterious in its origins. However we know that that it is not determined by an individual's use, society or the commodities' material properties but instead by something else embedded in the commodity itself. |
| Hans: What you say about exchange-value is very good except one brief quibble: at this point we do not yet know that exchange-value is determined by something embedded in the commodity itself. It is true, Marx introduces the exchange-value as a second property which each commodity has in addition to its use-value. In this way he establishes a link between the commodity and its exchange-value, and none of his readers will object, because such a link is part of everyday experience. After all, if the commodity falls to the ground and breaks, then its exchange-value goes out of the window. |
| But in the next few paragraphs, in the readings assigned Friday - Monday, Marx brings other everyday evidence, the notorious variability of prices, which seems to suggest that exchange-value is not intrinsic but purely relative. I.e., our practical experience gives contradictory evidence about the nature of exchange-value. It will be Marx's result of some interesting inferences from this contradiction that the exchange-value is the expression of something other than exchange-value embedded in the commodity itself. |
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