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Marx, Theses on Feurbach, Chapter 1, Capital, Chapter 4, The transformation of Money into Capital in MER Theses on Feurbach: Again the dualism: idealism/materialism. This time posed as active/passive, subjective/objective.
Analysis of commodities (MER 302) Commodity (definition) p. 303. “A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another.” Has both qualitative and quantitative aspects. its useful qualities must be realized through exchange (transfer to another) [308] it is a result of the interchange between nature and human labour [309] they have both a physical form and a value form [313] Use value: its utility, qualitative, inherent in the object, no separate existence. Realized through consumption, substance of wealth, material depositories of exchange value. [QUESTION - How does Marx come to the conclusion that commodities as exchange values “do not contain an atom of use-value”? p. 305] Value (or exchange value): quantitative, separable from commodity, incapable of being consumed. Congelation of homogenous human labour, of labour-power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure. [305] Through logic, Marx deduces that the equivalence of two unlike commodities is due to a third term. What is the common “thing” represented by money/exchange value? Appears as a total abstraction from use value. The common thing, Marx argues, is human labor in the abstract. [305] p. 304: The exchange value appears to be accidental and purely relative. Marx argues that it’s actually based on the quantity of (socially necessary) labor necessary to create the object. p. 307. Value of a commodity changes with every variation in the productiveness of labour. Productiveness determined by: a. average amount of skill of the workmen b. the state of science c. the degree of its practical application d. the social organization of production e. the extent and capabilities of the means of production f. physical conditions. p. 307 Use value not the same thing as value: air, virgin soil, etc. have utility, but no value until transformed by human labor. (Locke, based on earlier theories) Thing can be useful and a product of human labor without being a commodity – things produced and consumed by same person Engels notes that commodities must also be transferred to others as a use value through exchange. (308) p. 308 The Two-fold Character of the Labour Embodied in Commodities – its appearance as creator of use value and a value (exchange value) pp. 308-9. social division of labour – different kinds of useful labour. Can exist without the existence of commodities. pp. 312-3: Commodities come into the world in the shape of use values…This is their plain, homely, bodily form. They are, however, commodities, only because they are something two-fold, both object of utility, and, at the same time, depositories of value. They manifest themselves therefore as commodities, or have the form of commodities, only in so far as they have two forms, a physical or natural form and a value-form. (note the unity of ideal and material) Using logic, he demonstrates the difficulty of using a relativist explanation of value: 20 yards of linen = 2 coats. Mystery of the equality of unlike useful things – what is equal? (invisible, “sublime” – 317) Value a result of a relation between (2) commodities (linen and coat) (316-17) Which is the “yardstick?” Need a third term. Commodity: “a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men’s labour appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labour; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labour is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labour. This is the reason why the products of labour become commodities, social things whose qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible.” (p. 320) Commodity fetishim: p. 321 The labor (and its social relations) entailed in creating an object is not visible in the marketplace: only the object itself appears. The labor appears as “exchange value”—a social relation between things rather than people. 320 p. 321 Religion – fetishism: the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race p. 321-332 In capitalism, uniquely, labor appears both as a useful thing and a value: “This division of a product into a useful thing and a value becomes practically important, only when exchange has acquired such an extension that useful articles are produced for the purpose of being exchanged, and their character of values as therefore to be taken into account, beforehand, during production. From this moment the labour of the individual producer acquires a socially two-fold character.” p. 322: “Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into relatin with each other as values, it is not because we see in these articles the material receptacles of homogenous human labour. Quite the contrary: whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values our different products, by that very act, we also equate, as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it. Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social products’ for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as much a social product as language.” … “The social character of labour appears to us to be an objective character of the products themselves.” Basis of value p. 323: “In the midst of all the accidental and ever fluctuating exchange-relations between the products, the labour-time socially necessary for their production forcibly asserts itself like an over-riding law of Nature.” Critique of bourgeois economy p. 324: “It was the analysis of the prices of commoditieis that alone led to the determination of the magnitude of value, and it was the common expression of all commodities in money that alone led to the establishment of their characters as values. It is, however, just this ultimate money-form of the world of commodities that actually conceals, instead of disclosing, the social character of private labour, and the social relations between the individual producers” p. 229: Money is the universal equivalent, medium of exchange Labour theory of value 327. Political Economy has indeed analysed, however, incompletely, value and its magnitude, and has discovered what lies beneath these forms. But it has never once asked the question why labour is represented by the value of its product and labour-time by the magnitude of that value. These formulae, which bear it stamped upon them in unmistakable letters that they belong to a state of society, in which the process of production has the mastery over man, instead of being controlled by him, such formulae appear to the bourgeois intellect to be as much a self-evident necessity imposed by Nature as productive labour itself. Hence forms of social production that preceded the bourgeois form, are treated by the bourgeoisie in much the same way as the Fathers of the Church treated pre-Christian religions. p. 330: Two circuits of exchange: C-M-C – selling in order to buy (commodity sold and used to purchase another commodity: use value exchanged for use value) M-C-M’ – buying in order to sell (money buying a commodity in order to acquire more money—the merchant form of money capital)
Part II. The Transformation of Money into Capital see handout
Merchants’ capital – Mercantilists: buying cheap to sell dear. Industrial capital – Labor appears as a commodity. |
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