| This question <4|6> overall <4|6> Hans: <727|10>. |
| 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? |
| [5] Hans: Right-handed scissors. Wrong. Question 54 is not a brief summary of the assigned two pages of reading. On the contrary, it reasserts certain views which Marx is trying to argue against. In two ways: |
| (1) Question 54 says that the exchange value can be reduced to the use-value of the other thing. Marx says something very different, namely, that exchange-value is a second property of each commodity which has very little relationship with its use-value. The exchange value of a commodity does not come from its use-value. And it certainly does not come from the use-value of the other commodity. It finds its expression in that other use-value, but it has its source elsewhere. |
| (2) Question 54 looks at exchange value and use value from a subjective and instrumental point of view. It uses the definition: a commodity has exchange-value if it is desirable for me because I can exchange it. This definition puts the individual at the center. When Marx says that commodities have exchange value he refers to the social custom that they are commonly exchanged with each other. Societies are thinkable in which not everything can be exchanged against everything else, for instance where subsistence things are home-produced and only certain not locally available commodities, like salt or spices, are exchanged. |
| What I am saying here is not hair-splitting, but I am trying to distinguish the innocent-looking embryos of two completely different paradigms. I tried to say similar things in [1998WI:28]. |
| Ben, in [4], certainly has selected a question which is central to the readings. And his example, that a left-handed person would want to exchange a right-handed scissor for a left-handed scissor, supports his argument, because this is an example in which goods are exchanged because they have comparable use-values. But if the person exchanges her scissor for a Jazz ticket, then the exchangeability of these completely disparate things presupposes specific social relations. |
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