| This question <17|17> overall <15|18> Hans: <14|19>. |
| Exam Question 32: Does the use-value of a commodity depend on the person using it? |
| [17] Hans: Learning how to Read. Stuart has taken this class in the past and is returning as an observer. Therefore his answer [15] to question 54 is more focused on the readings than the more general discussion we had so far. Stuart addresses some of the subtleties of Marx's text. It takes practice and experience with the text to be able to do this. Reading a text and picking up on every turn of the author's thinking is an important and difficult skill. It is one of the skills I am trying transmit during this class. |
| My comment to the first half of Stuart's answer is submitted as answer to question 33, because it is more relevant for question 33 than for 54. |
| What is the difference between the use-value of a thing and the utility one gets from using it? Both of these concepts refer to the same relation between a material object and human life. If you call it “a use-value,” then you consider this relationship to be a property of the thing, the usefulness “of” the thing. (I put the “of” in quotes because “usefulness” is not a property of the thing itself, but it describes how the thing relates to human needs). |
| If you call this same relationship between the thing and human life the “utility obtained from using the thing,” you consider it as an attribute of the human (a measurement of the happiness the human gains from this object). |
| In short, one can say that Marx's concept of use-value attributes the usefulness of a thing to the thing, and the modern concept of a utility function attributes this usefulness to the user of the thing. (But in reality, it is a relation between the thing and its user.) |
| So far, I just have elaborated on the first two sentences in Stuart's paragraph about use-value in [15]. But then Stuart continues: “For example a book's use-value will most likely differ between a literate and an illiterate individual.” I'd like to emphasize that this is an atypical use of the word “use-value.” Sometimes Marx talks about the use-value of a thing for a given person, and he would probably agree that the use-value of a book for a literate person is different than that for an illiterate person. But usually, Marx uses the word “use-value” for the menu of all possible uses of a thing, independently of any specific person. (I said the same thing in [2004fa:174]). |
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