| This question <51|46> overall <54|56> Hans: <49|58>. |
| Exam Question 85: What is value (according to Marx)? |
| [55] Hans: Value is not a perception. Kalmerico [51] understands correctly that exchange-value, in Marx's theory, is only a derivative from the more fundamental underlying concept of value. But his formulation |
| “exchange-value is derived from the commodity's perceived value” |
| (my emphasis) wrongly locates this value in the minds of the market participants. Marx considers value not to be a perception or preference of the individuals making the exchanges, but a social relation, a relation of interdependence of which they need not be aware. |
| In order to make this clearer, let's play through an example. Assume commodities A and B are exchanged for each other one-to-one, but commodity A contains twice the amount of labor than commodity B. What happens? |
| If value were based on a perception, the owners of commodity A would say: “wait a minute, if I exchange my commodity for commodity B I am not getting enough labor in return.” Therefore they will be reluctant to make this exchange until the exchange proportions have been adjusted. |
| Marx had a different mechanism in mind. Marx tries to resolve these fundamental issues with the simplest example of a commodity economy, which would be petty producers, who have produced the commodities in their own workshops, meeting up with the final consumers on the market. The producer of commodity A would say: instead of producing commodity A and exchanging it for commodity B I should be producing commodity B directly. This will save me half the labor. Since B is more favored by the market than A, some producers will switch away from producing A and/or into producing B, until there is a glut of B and a shortage of A, so that their exchange proportion will be adjusted. |
| Here you see why Marx says in 127:1 that exchange-value is the mode of expression of some content distinguishable from it, because the adjustment takes place not in the market but in production. And it is also obvious that such an adjustment of production is only truly possible if all exchanges are mediated by money: then every producer can, among those things he or she is able to produce, switch into producing that which has the highest market price per labor hour performed. This transition to money will be discussed shortly, in Section 3 of Chapter One about the form of value. And Marx's abstract criterion that the form of value must be a true reflection of the substance of value, can be operationalized to mean: it must give the producers the information they need to make the adjustments I just described. |
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