Although use-values serve social needs and therefore exist within the social framework, they do not express the social relations of production. For instance, let us take as a use-value a commodity such as a diamond. We cannot tell by looking at it that the diamond is a commodity. Where it serves as an aesthetic or mechanical use-value, on the neck of a courtesan or in the hand of a glass-cutter, it is a diamond and not a commodity. To be a use-value is evidently a necessary prerequisite of the commodity, but it is immaterial to the use-value whether it is a commodity. Use-value as such, since it is independent of the determinate economic form, lies outside the sphere of investigation of political economy. It belongs in this sphere only when it is itself a determinate form. Use-value is the immediate physical entity in which a definite economic relationship—exchange-value—is expressed.
Finally, nothing can be a value without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labor contained in it; the labor does not count as labor, and therefore does not create value.
That Marx pays no attention to aesthetics, artistry, human value or social relationships in terms of ‘economics’. — I like sushi
The exchange makes a ‘product’ a ‘commodity’ and then the ‘use value’ alters to ‘Value’. If I produce art with no intention of selling it and then someone steals it from me they can most certainly sell it regardless of my personal intentions. — I like sushi
(For Steuart) The price of goods therefore comprises two elements that are completely different from each other; firstly their real value, secondly, the profit upon alienation, the profit realised through their transfer to another person, their sale.
||221| This profit upon alienation therefore arises from the price of the goods being greater than their real value, or from the goods being sold above their value. Gain on the one side therefore always involves loss on the other. No addition to the general stock is created. Profit, that is, surplus-value, is relative and resolves itself into “a vibration of the balance of wealth between parties”. Steuart himself rejects the idea that surplus-value can be explained in this way. His theory of “vibration of the balance of wealth between parties”, however little it touches the nature and origin of surplus-value itself, remains important in considering the distribution of surplus-value among different classes and among different categories such as profit, interest and rent.
Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour, &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities. Hence an object may have a price without having value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary price-form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real value-relation; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which is without value, because no human labour has been incorporated in it
Something needs to have a use value in order for it to have an exchange value. — fdrake
If the thing is useless, so is the labor contained in it; the labor does not count as labor, and therefore does not create value.
What I wanted was the meaning of ‘useless’ explained. — I like sushi
So is also the establishment of social measures for the quantities of these useful objects.
The diversity of these measures of commodities originates in part from the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, and in part from convention.
The usefulness of a thing makes it a use-value.
But this usefulness does not dangle in midair. Conditioned by the physical properties of the body of the commodity, it has no existence apart from the latter.
The body itself of the commodity, such as iron, wheat, diamond, etc., is therefore a use-value or a good.
This characteristic of a commodity does not depend on whether appropriating its useful properties costs more or less labor.
The commodity is at first an exterior object, a thing, which by its properties satisfies human wants of one sort or another.
The nature of such wants, whether they arise, for instance, from the stomach or from
imagination, makes no difference.
Nor does it matter here how the object satisfies these human wants, whether directly as object of consumption, or indirectly as means of production.
Every useful thing, such as iron, paper, etc., is to be looked at under two aspects: quality and quantity.
But this usefulness does not dangle in midair. Conditioned by the physical properties of the body of the commodity, it has no existence apart from the latter.
The utility of a thing makes it a use value. But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity.
Anyway, maybe I’m not discussing what you wished to discuss in this thread? Either way I think my time would be better spent keeping my thoughts mostly to myself for now as I work my way through the text. I like the line of questions he presents even if I find the presentation wanting. — I like sushi
From what I’ve read Marx has done no more than sharpen the capitalist sword rather than offer a new means of engagement in the sphere of ‘economics’ - maybe I was expecting way too much :) — I like sushi
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