Question 1 What did Marx mean with his formu - University of Utah

U of Utah Econ 5080 2007fa 95
There are many different determining factors that help one decide what to do with their
commodities, some of which the commodity owner are unaware of.
A commodity is mysterious because one needs the powers of abstraction to grasp them,
meaning that when you look at a commodity, there is a lot more to it than what initially
meets the eye. There are many underlying factors that have made that commodity what it is;
human labor, environmental factors, different uses, etc.
Hans: Here you are only talking about the production of the use-value. For this use-value to be a commodity you
need private production, the equalization of labor, equal rights on the market place etc.
And there are many more possibilities of what one can do with the commodity. Take an
article of clothing for example, let’s say a shirt. When you first look at it you just see shirt.
You notice the color, the style, possibly the material. But when you take time to analyze the
shirt and think about what went into making it, or what options you have of using it, your
possibilities are limitless.
Hans: Again you are looking too much at the use-value of the commodity and not the social relations of which
the commodity is the material expression. Perhaps you could have said at this point that it is an organization of
production which does not specify which use-values are necessary for the survival of society, but everything is
guided by market success.
You have to take into account that the shirt was made maybe in a factory, where they
could use child labor.
Hans: Now you are talking. The relation between you and the producer is shrouded by the commodity, you don’t
know whether the gleaming thing on the shelf is produced by child labor or under other oppressive conditions.
There are many different materials that are used to make the shirt. The fabric it is made
out of, the thread used to sew it together, etc. It becomes a lot more complicated now. And
the mystery comes from what you can do with the shirt. What outfits that you can come up
with, different ways to embellish the shirt, other uses for the shirt other than as a clothing
item, etc. Once you take all of this into consideration a commodity can be complicated
and/or mysterious.
Hans: You have to distinguish more consciously between those properties the commodity has as a use-value, and
those which come from the social relations in a commodity society.
Next Message by Amy is [133].
[107] Jeff: Complicated and Mysterious. When considering Marx’s argument in the
beginning of this section, he attempts to realize where the value of the commodity really
is located. He uses the example of the wood before being turned into a table. Before the
manufacture of the table, the piece of wood was not seen as an important commodity. Its
value became apparent only after it had been made into a table. All that happened is the
form of the wood has changed. Intrinsically the piece of wood has not changed at all. Marx
also says that the table does not have unusual qualities (i.e. the capability to move on its
own) which it acquired only after it was made, also leading to the question of where is this
value acquired from. Therefore, he attempts to analyze where the value comes from. This is
the mystery he is referring to.
When considering how a commodity becomes valued after it slightly changes form without
any change in intrinsic value, one would wonder if maybe its value is arrived at from its
96 2007fa Econ 5080 U of Utah
instrumental value that it delivers. Neither the time nor the effort put into making this commodity
add to its value. But the result of all three components put together yield a valuable
commodity. This is the mystery that Marx discusses early on in his Fetishism section.
Hans: With the example of the table Marx tried to illustrate that the use-value of the commodity is not mysterious
– because the production of the table as a use-value only changes the form of a naturally existing object (wood). But
the table becomes mysterious when it is a commodity, i.e., produced for sale. When it is exchanged, its use-value
becomes the measure of value for other commodities. This is what Marx means with the table standing on its head
in relation to other commodities. Another example might be: for a furniture business the table becomes part of their
capital which needs to make profits. (But Marx has not yet introduced capital, that’s why he does not bring this as
an example here.) The mysterious aspects of commodities have to do with their value and exchange relations, not
with their use-values.
Message [107] referenced by [109]. Next Message by Jeff is [126].
[109] Hans: Mystery of the Commodity. Although Jeff says otherwise in [107], there
is no mystery in Marx’s mind about the source of value. In his theory, commodity prices
come from labor content. Here Marx differs from mainstream economics, which says that
commodity prices come from the marginal utility of the consumers. In Marx’s theory, the
utility of a commodity determines how much of the commodity will be produced, but it does
not determine the price.
The mystery, for Marx, is rather: if the market rewards the producers for their labor, why
do they not know this? Why do they think the value of the commodity somehow comes out
of the commodity itself and not from their labor? Jeff wrote expressly: “Neither the time
nor the effort put into making this commodity add to its value.”
Our social relations are not transparent to us. This is a problem. If we do not see what is
going on in society, we are not the masters of our own relations, but the pawns.
Next Message by Hans is [113].
[115] Chris: An oasis of relations. The mystery for Marx is not the use-value, which
is something “obvious and trivial” as we can view this as something that satisfies needs in
itself or becomes this through human labor. We can understand this, as Marx says, as when
altering a piece of wood into a table, it has changed but it is tangible, we can see it and touch
it.
The mystery also does not arise from the determinants of value such as labor, quantity of
labor and such. So where does this “mystery” arise from?
The mystery lies in the fact that commodities reflect back an objective reality that is
not controlled by the producers, the social relationships within commodities can take on
many forms. Marx uses the example of the eye and the light of an object, where the eye
and the object have physical reality with each other, there is a physical reaction between
the object and the eye. The commodity form of the products of labor, and the value with
which it represents itself does not involve itself with the physical properties or itself as a
physical object. It is therefore the interactions between people that give commodities a
relationship between themselves. This is a weird idea that although commodities do have
physical properties and can be objects such as a table, it is not these physical properties that
wholly determine them but the social relations between people in society.
Next Message by Chris is [195].