slave, serf, worker

[RedMaterialist]

A bushel of wheat is produced by a slave on a plantation, a serf on an estate, and a worker on a gigantic farm owned by a monopoly corporation.

Are all three bushels of wheat commodities?

[Rafiq]

Not within the context of capitalism, no. Not all three.

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[Petrol Bomb]

Somebody correct me if I am wrong, but I would think that only the bushel of wheat produced by the worker is a commodity. The wheat in all three situations embodies a use-value and an exchange-value. The use-value being how useful something is. They also have exchange-values, as they can be exchanged for something else that is useful, like a coat. But neither the slave nor the serf exchange their produce for something of value. The worker exchanges his produce for a wage, which can later be used to purchase, commodities.

[RedMaterialist]

Not within the context of capitalism, no. Not all three.

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So, why, for instance, the slave produced wheat is not a commodity, but the worker produced wheat is?

[Devrim]

A bushel of wheat is produced by a slave on a plantation, a serf on an estate, and a worker on a gigantic farm owned by a monopoly corporation.

Are all three bushels of wheat commodities?

If they are produced to be exchanged, then yes they are.

Devrim

[cyu]

As far as I'm concerned, serfdom, wage slavery, and debt slavery are just different modifications of the original slavery, given some lipstick by the ruling class, which they then try to spin as something more acceptable, so that the general population can be more easily duped into continued economic domination.

[Blake's Baby]

Marx says that the commodity only assumes its commodity form, when it is exchanged in the market.

In the Middle Ages, and in the period of the Greek city-states and the Roman Empire, there was production for exchange. So yes, there was commodity production. Some of it was even by wage labour.

It's not how it's produced that makes it a commodity, it's whether or not it is an item of exchange. So there may be things that are produced by waged workers that are not commodities - if someone is paying the workforce to produce something for direct consumption, for example. If the bushel of wheat is going to be used without being traded it isn't a commodity, no matter who produced it.

[RedMaterialist]

If they are produced to be exchanged, then yes they are.

Devrim

So, if one of the bushels of wheat produced by the serf is used to feed the landlord, it fails to become a commodity; but if another bushel is exchanged or sold to, say, a grain merchant, then it becomes a commodity.

Under capitalism, all products become commodities? Thus the total transformation of society into exchange-value, into 100% commodification of society.

[Zukunftsmusik]

As far as I'm concerned, serfdom, wage slavery, and debt slavery are just different modifications of the original slavery, given some lipstick by the ruling class, which they then try to spin as something more acceptable, so that the general population can be more easily duped into continued economic domination.

This is over-simplified. It's quite clear that changes in modes of production are real, not just "lipstick". Wage-labour changed society to be qualitatively very different from slave society.

Also, this doesn't answer the question.

[Devrim]

So, if one of the bushels of wheat produced by the serf is used to feed the landlord, it fails to become a commodity; but if another bushel is exchanged or sold to, say, a grain merchant, then it becomes a commodity.

Under capitalism, all products become commodities? Thus the total transformation of society into exchange-value, into 100% commodification of society.

Essentially yes, BB clarifies above.

Devrim

[RedMaterialist]

This is over-simplified. It's quite clear that changes in modes of production are real, not just "lipstick". Wage-labour changed society to be qualitatively very different from slave society.

And this is because the amount (quantitative change) of commodities produced changed, say, from 10% in slavery to 50% in feudalism to 100% in capitalism? Quantity changing quality.

Have their been any studies showing the % of goods produced in slavery and feudalism that went to be sold?

I would think that, perhaps, it was not that no commodities were produced in slavery and feudalism, but that a relatively small % of products were exchanged for money, or sold.

[Blake's Baby]

And this is because the amount (quantitative change) of commodities produced changed, say, from 10% in slavery to 50% in feudalism to 100% in capitalism? Quantity changing quality...

Yes, capitalism is the generalisation of wage labour and commodity production. But even in capitalism, there isn't 100% commodity production. Not everything is produced for sale. Some things are directly consumed. I made a sandwich before, I ate it. I could have swapped it for something (at which point, it would have become a commodity), but I was hungry.


...Have their been any studies showing the % of goods produced in slavery and feudalism that went to be sold?...

Good question. I'm sure there have been, but you have to bear in mind that feudalism in particular was a very 'local' system. What may hold true of the Champagne region in the 13th century wouldn't hold good for Navarre in the 12th century or northern Poland in the 14th.


...I would think that, perhaps, it was not that no commodities were produced in slavery and feudalism, but that a relatively small % of products were exchanged for money, or sold.

Well, yeah. Markets existed. Of course, you can have markets without commodities, you could just trade unintentional surpluses. That, I would think, is how markets originally developed.

As I said earlier:

"In the Middle Ages, and in the period of the Greek city-states and the Roman Empire, there was production for exchange. So yes, there was commodity production. Some of it was even by wage labour."

[cyu]

Also, this doesn't answer the question.


I know =]

Actually, being a non-Marxist, I'm not quite sure what the point of the question is. So what if something is or isn't a commodity? Are we supposed to judge things differently based on this definition?

[CriticalJames]

The goods being produced by the worker are certainly commodities, however it depends on the context for the first two. If the slave master or the serf lord decides to take the bushels of wheat and then sell them on the market or exchange them with somebody else, then yes - they are commodities.

[Blake's Baby]

They're not 'certainly commodities'. They're only commodities if they're sold. Some things are still directly consumed. Waged workers for example make the food that is consumed (without being 'bought') in hospitals. The meals they make are not 'commodities' because they've never entered a market relationship with other commodities. But it's still waged labour inside a capitalist economy doing the producing.

[Zukunftsmusik]

So what if something is or isn't a commodity?

the commodity is kinda important if you want to understand capitalism beyond the lipstick

[Luís Henrique]

So, if one of the bushels of wheat produced by the serf is used to feed the landlord, it fails to become a commodity; but if another bushel is exchanged or sold to, say, a grain merchant, then it becomes a commodity.

Evidently.


Under capitalism, all products become commodities? Thus the total transformation of society into exchange-value, into 100% commodification of society.

If, even under capitalism, my mother cooks a meal for me, it is not a commodity, unless she actually charges me money on it.

Really, I doubt a society can be 100% commodified.

What characterises capitalism is not 100% commodification, but overwhelming commodification of production. Not the "total transformation of society into exchange value" (that is indeed absurd), but social relations being directed and influenced by the production of exchange value.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

They're not 'certainly commodities'. They're only commodities if they're sold.

So an automobile made by Ford isn't a commodity until it is actually sold? I wouldn't say that.


Some things are still directly consumed. Waged workers for example make the food that is consumed (without being 'bought') in hospitals. The meals they make are not 'commodities' because they've never entered a market relationship with other commodities. But it's still waged labour inside a capitalist economy doing the producing.

Exactly. There are a lot of things that are produced in a capitalist economy that aren't commodities - from classes in public schools to domestic services.

Luís Henrique

[Blake's Baby]

You're right, they're not commodities until they're put up for sale. 'Sold' was ambiguous, I meant 'until they are put on sale' not 'until the transaction to buy them is completed'.

[RedMaterialist]

I know =]

Actually, being a non-Marxist, I'm not quite sure what the point of the question is. So what if something is or isn't a commodity? Are we supposed to judge things differently based on this definition?

Well, even if you're not a Marxist if you want to understand capitalist society you need to know about commodities:

"The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails, presents itself as “an immense accumulation of commodities,”[1] its unit being a single commodity."

[MarxArchist]

So, why, for instance, the slave produced wheat is not a commodity, but the worker produced wheat is?
The slave is the commodity and I would argue so is the product of his labor if sold on the market.

[RedMaterialist]

Evidently.



Really, I doubt a society can be 100% commodified.


Luís Henrique

The early Marx though it was possible:

"Finally, there came a time when everything that men had considered as inalienable became an object of exchange, of traffic and could be alienated. This is the time when the very things which till then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought – virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc. – when everything, in short, passed into commerce... Poverty of Philosophy

[MarxArchist]

The early Marx though it was possible:

"Finally, there came a time when everything that men had considered as inalienable became an object of exchange, of traffic and could be alienated. This is the time when the very things which till then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought – virtue, love, conviction, knowledge, conscience, etc. – when everything, in short, passed into commerce... Poverty of Philosophy

Free market capitalists dream of this scenario.

[Blake's Baby]

He's being somewhat poetical-rhetorical here. There are examples of all of these 'goods and services' being commodified, from prostitution to journalism; but it's impossible that all of them always and forever will be commodified.

[Jimmie Higgins]

A bushel of wheat is produced by a slave on a plantation, a serf on an estate, and a worker on a gigantic farm owned by a monopoly corporation.

Are all three bushels of wheat commodities?
Just some unorganized thoughs:

Even within feudal systems and with new world slavery, non-prol production could still be geared to commodity production. I've been reading a materialist account of how a world market operated even as feudalism was still dominant and how some estates at certain points would be producing 80% for the market. The main difference as far as I can tell is that the surplus (profit) would be used back on the estate but not re-invested to make more profits necissarily. If aristocrats wanted to increase their wealth, they might either encroach on neighborinf wilderness lands or make more pesants into serfs. For developed capitalism though, land-use is based on land value not the sort of organization of political relationships as well as production.

New world slavery is also interesting in regards to these questions. Obviously cotton and sugar and so on were major commodities probably as important as oil is today, yet it was all accomplished through slave-labor, but for trade in a world market that included capitalist merchants and speculators in parts of Europe and then trade with Eastern European serf-produced grain commodities.

[Luís Henrique]

The slave is the commodity and I would argue so is the product of his labor if sold on the market.

The slaves themselves were possible "commodities", no doubt, though they were not "produced" in the sence an automobile or a bushel of wheat. There was always the juridical possibility of they being sold, and their proprietors held the right of alienating them. They were not necessarily commodities, however: a child born to a slave woman would be a slave, and possibly never sold or bought during life.

What they made were commodities if it was put for sale; otherwise not. The cotton the slave picked in South Carolina to be sold for English cotton industry was a commodity (as was the olive oil the slave pressed in Campania to be sold in Rome); but the tomatoes or lettuces the slave grew for his own consumption, or for her master's, weren't.

Luís Henrique

[RedMaterialist]

The slaves themselves were possible "commodities", no doubt, though they were not "produced" in the sence an automobile or a bushel of wheat.

Luís Henrique

If a commodity is a complex of use-value and exchange-value/value; and the value is created by abstract, generalized, social labor, are slaves considered to be abstract labor when the wheat they produce becomes a commodity?

What about a slave that produces a shoe for his master to wear and another shoe which his master sells.

Aristotle (quoted in Marx) said selling the shoe is an unnatural act. Of course, he thought slavery was a natural economic system and he could not see that human labor produced a surplus value.

Maybe the labor becomes "abstracted" when the surplus-value is taken or abstracted from the worker/producer. It would be literally abstracted, deducted, subtracted, and appropriated, alienated.

Just some generalized thoughts abstracted from Marx. really.

[Luís Henrique]

If a commodity is a complex of use-value and exchange-value/value; and the value is created by abstract, generalized, social labor, are slaves considered to be abstract labor when the wheat they produce becomes a commodity?

Good question. I think yes; if someone produces commodities, and consequently value, his or her labour has to be taken as abstract generic labour.


What about a slave that produces a shoe for his master to wear and another shoe which his master sells.

The shoe she produces for her master's use, or for her own use, or for her master to give as a gift to a friend, aren't commodities; the shoe she makes for her master to sell is a commodity.

I understand were you are going; how is the slave's labour generic abstract labour in one case, but concrete, specific labour in the other? And I think this is not a problem. All labour is always concrete, specific labour, even labour put into commodities (the slave, or serf, or apprentice, or wage labourer, after all, has to be a shoemaker to make a shoe; to use leather, glue, nails, specific shoemaking tools, etc. Without that, there is no shoe production). All labour can potentially be considered "generic, abstract labour"; but the abstract, generic aspect of labour is irrelevant where value isn't being produced - whether the slave makes the shoe in two hours or two months is irrelevant if the shoe is for personal use, or in any case not for sale. It is only the operation of "sale" that requires labour to be considered in its abstract, generic, aspect, because a sale requires a price, and prices depend (normally) on value.

Of course, there is a problem in that the labour power of the slave is not itself a commodity: he isn't paid a wage. But while this may complicate the issue of how his labour determines value, or how this value determines price, I don't think it fundamentally changes the issue of what is (or what is not) a commodity.


Aristotle (quoted in Marx) said selling the shoe is an unnatural act. Of course, he thought slavery was a natural economic system and he could not see that human labor produced a surplus value.

He indeed could not even understand value, much less surplus value. But this lead him into thinking that commerce is an unnatural thing; at the bottom, it was what he couldn't understand - the mystification of concrete labour into abstract labour - that repulsed, and perhaps even frightened him.


Maybe the labor becomes "abstracted" when the surplus-value is taken or abstracted from the worker/producer. It would be literally abstracted, deducted, subtracted, and appropriated, alienated.

The abstraction, I fear, is a mere mental operation; the nature of the toil itself isn't changed. A shoemaker is still making shoes, using the same raw materials, the same (technological progress aside) tools, etc. The abstraction only exists in the commodification of the product of labour.

*************************

In a different thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/materialist-dialectic-mysticism-t167627/index.html?p=2398932&highlight=hammer#post2398932), I wrote this:


But those two qualities of a commodity are, in a sence, mutually exclusive. If I intend for a hammer to be a tool for my own use, then its value disappears: it is not for sell, it is not a commodity. Conversely, if I intend to sell the hammer for a profit, then it has to be useless to me as a tool (otherwise I would not sell it). So at any instance that a hammer has a value, it is use-value is only potential; at any instance that a hammer has a use-value, it is its value that is merely potential. And so, the commodity must have a history: it is produced as a commodity, in order to be sold for a profit. But at the moment it is realised as a commodity, ie, at the moment it is sold, it immediately loses the quality of being a commodity, and becomes something else - a tool in the case of a hammer, food in the case of a meal, etc. If, on the contrary, it is never sold, it remains a potential value for ever - until its destruction, for instance - without ever realising itself.

So, the "commoditiness" of a commodity isn't in its materiality, but in its social history; a thing "is" not a commodity, a thing is turned into a commodity by sale and purchase.

Luís Henrique

[cyu]

A famous person once said, "The point is not merely to understand the world, but to change it."

How would understanding what is and isn't a commodity help in the overthrow of capitalism? Or even in helping to provide economic goods for the poor?

[Luís Henrique]

A famous person once said, "The point is not merely to understand the world, but to change it."

How would understanding what is and isn't a commodity help in the overthrow of capitalism? Or even in helping to provide economic goods for the poor?

If we don't understand what a commodity is, we might reinstate the production of commodities after a revolution, without understanding the dangers that would entail. Or we might conversely starve ourselves by suppressing the production of commodities before we put up an alternative system of distribution.

Luís Henrique

[cyu]

we might reinstate the production of commodities after a revolution, without understanding the dangers that would entail.


OK then, what are the dangers of commodities? As far as I see it, slavery, serfdom, wage and debt slavery are all negative things, and should be avoided, whether they are producing commodities or not. Is the fear that if we abolish slavery, serfdom, wage and debt slavery, that we won't have enough commodities to go around?

[The Jay]

I know =]

Actually, being a non-Marxist, I'm not quite sure what the point of the question is. So what if something is or isn't a commodity? Are we supposed to judge things differently based on this definition?

This is the economics subforum so it would make sense for someone to ask about the definition of an economic term. Blake's Baby beat me to it though.

[RedMaterialist]

A famous person once said, "The point is not merely to understand the world, but to change it."

How would understanding what is and isn't a commodity help in the overthrow of capitalism? Or even in helping to provide economic goods for the poor?

The famous person who said that wrote The Fetishism of Commodities 20 years later.

[cyu]

The famous person who said that wrote The Fetishism of Commodities 20 years later.

Thanks. I'd prefer to discuss why http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism is bad, rather than what is or isn't a commodity, but maybe that discussion is too basic for this thread. =]