PP216

1. PP216 “If commodities could speak, they would say this: our use-value may interest men, but it does not belong to us as objects. What does belong to us as objects, however, is our value. … We relate to each other merely as exchange-values” (Capital 243)

2. 1) What is the substance of value of a commodity? 2) What is the measure of its magnitude? Answers:1) labour; 2) labour-time 1) Use-value: an item can be a use-value without being a value. Why? 2) An article can be a use-value without being a commodity. Why? Answers: 1) no labour involved—natural resources; 2) no social use value (225), i.e. not exchanged Summary and Implications of Marx’s analysis of the idea of a commodity

3. Analysis of Commodity • A necessary condition for the production of commodities—the heterogeneous forms of use-value—is a social division of labour. • Is the converse true—i.e. commodity production is a necessary condition for a social division of labour? • No. Why? • Think about situations in which no social use values are produced as in communal situations

4. The mystery of commodities • “The categories of bourgeois economics … are forms of thought which are socially valid, and therefore objective, for the relations of production belonging to this historically determined mode of social production” (Capital 236) • Economists treat the relation of commodity exchange as a relation between the commodities themselves. It is little wonder that commodities appear to us as objects with an independent life of their own. • What, then, is the mystery of commodities?

5. The mystery of commodities • What is fetishism? • belief in objects that have magical properties • How does that apply to the idea of a commodity? • Value is viewed as an inherent property of commodities: “A pearl or diamond is valuable as a pearl or diamond” (Capital 243). But how can this be? • He remarks acidly “so far no chemist has ever discovered the [value] in a pearl or diamond” (ibid)

6. The mystery of commodities • Consider the following rebuttal: If 10 units of shoes, can be exchanged for 5 units of coats, and 3 units of coats can be exchanged for 9 units of sweaters, then shoes can be exchanged for sweaters. • Better still, with money, we can say A is worth $5, and B is worth $3 and C $13 • Haven’t we determined the value of a commodity? • Marx holds that the “money form” allows for the masking of the mystery of commodities (236).

7. Commodity exchange • What is the source of this value? • “Simple average labour” (228) or “homogeneous human labour” (234). But what is that? • What is the relation between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ labour? • “The various proportions in which different kinds of labour are reduced to simple labour as their unit of measurement are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers; these proportions … appear to be handed down by tradition” (229).

8. What else is left out of view in this way of thinking? • The social relations required for that type of reasoning to emerge, in particular “the social character of private labour and social relations between individual workers” (236 italics added).

9. Commodity exchange • As commodities, “the definite social relation between men themselves … [assumes here] the fantastical form of a relation between things” (232-233). Yet, “men do not … bring the products of their labour because they see these objects merely as the material integuments of homogeneous human labour. The reverse is true: by equating their different products to each other in exchange as values, they equate their different kinds of labour as human labour” (234).

10. Commodity exchange • Marx observes a parallel between the masking of social relations between individuals as relations between things (i.e. commodities) in religion. Why? • “There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures with a life of their own, which enter into relations with each other and with the human race” (233).

11. Commodity exchange • What is hidden from consideration is the relation between “private labours that are carried on independent of each other” (234). • Earlier, Marx observed that “only the products of mutually independent acts of labour, performed in isolation, can confront each other as commodities” (226) • Yet, “a thing can be useful, and a product of human labour, without being a commodity” (225). Are there other possibilities for the relation between individuals?

12. Other possibilities • Are there other possibilities of social relations for us to consider instead of independent producers? • Consider the three examples he discusses on p. 236-239. Take the case of the feudal system and the case of a patriarchal family unit which has a division of labour but produces everything for its own needs. What do they have in common? • Dependence, in particular “the performance of … labour appear at all events as their own personal relations, and are not disguised as social relations between things” (237, italics added).

13. Other possibilities • Note Marx is not recommending these forms of dependence but is inviting us to think about possibilities. • So suppose, he tells us, we have an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common, and using their diverse kinds of labour power as one single social labour force. • What would be the outcome?

14. Other possibilities • The production process will then be rational. Items that are socially necessary will be produced socially not individually. • “The social relations of the individual producers, both towards their labour and their products of their labour, are here transparent … in production as well as in distribution” (239)

15. Lifting the veil—a historical process • The mystery, the veil of, commodities will not be lifted “until it becomes production by freely associated men, and stands under their conscious and planned control” (239) • Marx adds that such an event will not come suddenly, but is the end product of a “long and tormented historical development” (ibid) • Why is the idea of commodity production and exchange, i.e. private producers working independently of one another, irrational?

16. Relation to the Kant reading • What is the relation to our discussion of Kant, in particular to his idea of Sapere Aude (dare to know)?