| This question <43|49> overall <44|46> Hans: <44|49>. |
| Question 73: Marx argues that commodities are exchangeable only because they contain some common substance. Bailey denies this. He compares the exchange-value of commodities with the distance between points, which is not based on a commonality between the two points but is purely relative: “As we cannot speak of the distance of any object without implying some other object between which and the former this relation exists, so we cannot speak of the value of a commodity but in reference to another commodity compared with it. A thing cannot be valuable in itself without reference to another thing any more than a thing can be distant in itself without reference to another thing.” . Comment. |
| [45] Hans: Cost is not value. Marcellus [41] gives a new argument why commodities have a common equal substance. Marcellus says that this common substance is their cost. Marx would not be satisfied with this, for several reasons: |
| (1) It is a circular argument. Costs are simply the values of other commodities. Marcellus is in effect saying: my commodity has value because other commodities have value. This is not an explanation why all commodities have value. |
| (2) If one equates value with cost, then one cannot explain why, in a normal situation, commodities are sold at values above their cost. |
| (3) By equating value with cost, Marcellus is assuming that the value the workers add to the product is equal to the labor cost. This denies Marx's explanation that profits come from laborers being paid less than the value they create. |
| In Marx's theory, that which adds value to the product is not the money the capitalist has to pay for the labor, but it is the labor itself. Higher wages would therefore not lead to inflation but to lower profits for the capitalists. Which, in Marx's eyes, would be a good thing. Marx does not believe in “trickle-down economics.” He thinks that the working class is a better representative of the interests of society as a whole than the capitalists. |
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