Reading Capital, continued (thread #2)...

[blindpig]

anaxarchos
09-24-2009, 01:08 PM

This section of Capital starts us on that path (ending with "fetishism").

I agree with you that the "defenders of capitalism would not claim that things have value separate from, outside of social relations". Certainly they would agree that the values in circulation would not be obvious to a Martian. Still, the issues start to fog up as we start to turn the question over in our heads.

It is certainly true that an axe is useful. It is probably true that two axe's are also useful (a backup, in case the first breaks; conveniently placed in another location, etc.). When we start to get to 50 axes or 50,000, we want them, not because of their axe-i-ness, but because they each have value, and we can exchange them for other things... or for money, which is to say the same thing. Now your observation starts to turn on its head. Instead of, "I want it, therefore it has value", we now substitute, "It has value, therefore I want it."

We are actually using "value", in this case, in the two-sided way that Marx describes commodities. By appropriating a use-value, we satisfy some human need. By appropriating value, we take command of social labor... the labor of others. And, in truth, the two have nothing whatever to do with each other. From the standpoint of value, railroads are the same as cardboard boxes are the same as beer are the same as jetways in airports are the same as motor oil. In fact, we have just described the evolution of the Illinois Central Railroad into I.C. Industries.

As use-values though, a cardboard box will simply not do, if you were thirsty and needed a beer.

[blindpig]

Two Americas
09-24-2009, 02:09 PM

]Instead of, "I want it, therefore it has value", we now substitute, "It has value, therefore I want it."

Very good. I understand.

[blindpig]

blindpig
09-25-2009, 04:47 AM

The bow & arrow analogy.

Let us continue, need t' sharpen my tools.

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
09-27-2009, 07:09 AM

because Marx starts to treat specific cases of value and it all starts to sound like academese and it is hard to keep all of the various subsections straight.

This section will probably bear quite a bit of discussion especially because the derivation leading to money (which I don't think is solely accomplished bythe substitution Anax mentions) actually draws in some mathematical background regarding infinite series (and it is doubly surprising because today you have to be at least at the graduate level in math to actually absorb what Marx is saying about the deficiency of such series)

[blindpig]

PinkoCommie
09-27-2009, 08:06 AM

"Turn and examine a single commodity, by itself, as we will, yet in so far as it remains an object of value, it seems impossible to grasp it. If, however, we bear in mind that the value of commodities has a purely social reality, and that they acquire this reality only in so far as they are expressions or embodiments of one identical social substance, viz., human labour, it follows as a matter of course, that value can only manifest itself in the social relation of commodity to commodity."

Because, as far as value relations are concerned, it is really "the social relation of" person to person which is being described...

Social relations between persons, once commodity production becomes the norm, are mediated by *things*. This was not the case before commodity production and will not be the case after commodity production passes into history, along with the greed for *things* that necessarily accompanies it.

In fact, an entirely different construction of value will have to come into being.


---
That's 5 lines. How'd I do?

[blindpig]

Kid of the Black Hole
09-27-2009, 08:16 AM



EDIT: I was going to be a smartass and throw his own words back at him as an answer:


It is certainly true that an axe is useful. It is probably true that two axe's are also useful (a backup, in case the first breaks; conveniently placed in another location, etc.). When we start to get to 50 axes or 50,000, we want them, not because of their axe-i-ness, but because they each have value, and we can exchange them for other things... or for money, which is to say the same thing. Now your observation starts to turn on its head. Instead of, "I want it, therefore it has value", we now substitute, "It has value, therefore I want it."

The answer is not necessarily "explicitly" stared in Chapter 1 Section 3 so much as it automatically accompanies the derivation of money

[blindpig]

PinkoCommie
09-27-2009, 09:04 AM

That 5 lines of his pretty much says it all.

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Username
09-27-2009, 04:43 PM

In that case, yeah, it does say something.

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Kid of the Black Hole
09-27-2009, 04:53 PM

1. what conditions are required to be able to sell your axe?

2. is selling your axe under duress the same as manufacturing 10,000 axes with the expressed intent of selling them for money?

3. what is the distinction, the two-fold character that comes up repeatedly, of value? How is it that exchange value and use value are almost completely unrelated yet cohabit in the same commodity?

4. Is selling your axe a way of accumulating "value" or is it merely a more evolved manner of bartering (ie you are actually selling your axe to buy something else you want/need, but the transaction is "mediated" by money)

[blindpig]

Username
09-27-2009, 04:55 PM

Somebody else has to want it.

Period.