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The Commodity

The Commodity. A Commodity has three primary attributes: 1)Use-Value 2)Exchange-Value 3)Value. Use-Value A commodity is an object that satisfies human needs of whatever kind. It is the usefulness of a thing; this is its Use-Value. Use-Value/Exchange-Value

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The Commodity

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  1. The Commodity

  2. A Commodity has three primary attributes: 1)Use-Value 2)Exchange-Value 3)Value

  3. Use-Value A commodity is an object that satisfies human needs of whatever kind. It is the usefulness of a thing; this is its Use-Value.

  4. Use-Value/Exchange-Value Every useful thing can be looked at from two points of view: quality and quantity.

  5. Exchange-Value Appears as a quantitative relation between commodities. It is how one set of Use-Values may be exchanged for another in a particular proportion. The amount of one commodity exchanged for another varies in time and place and so appears accidental.

  6. A commodity has many exchange-values. 1 ipod = 1 digital camera or 5 pairs of shoes or 20 yards of silk or 1/2 oz of gold or …

  7. What does this tell us? That these commodities hold something in common that may be compared. Both are equal to a third thing which is neither one nor the other. Hmmmm…

  8. “As use-values, commodities differ above all in quality, while as exchange-values they can only differ in quantity, and therefore do not contain an atom of use-value.” -Marx If we remove a thing’s use value:

  9. “It is no longer a table, a house, a piece of yarn or any other useful thing.” “Nor is it the product of labor of the joiner, the spinner,…” “They [the kinds of labor] can no longer be distinguished, but are all together reduced to the same kind of labor, human labor in the abstract.”

  10. So according to Marx society is ruled by equivalence; making dissimilar things similar by turning them into abstract quantities. But what is this third thing that allows us to compare commodities as quantities. What are we quantifying? It is the measurement of:

  11. Value Value is the abstract human labor that is materialized within the commodity. It is measured in the amount of socially necessary time needed to produce the commodity.

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