Does capitalism produce things for use-value?

[Jacob Cliff]

I understand that socialism is based on production for use rather than for profit, and that capitalist production only produces commodity for exchange-value (profit). But thinking abou it, is this for use? If people need or have use for a certain commodity, the market would demand capitalists to produce that commodity; is this not producing for use-values, just with the middle-man (the boss) soaking up surplus value?

[Sinister Intents]

I'm not eloquent enough to properly answer this, but I don't give myself enough credit, so here goes it!

The commodities and services are produced and utilized for a profit, they do get used. Its about profit entirely, a capitalist owns the means of production and works it themselves or has employees work it for them to procure profit by producing commodities and services with utility.

Hope that answers a bit :)

Going off of my own business: My employees and I produce for a profit, I buy their labor and pay them a wage, while trying to make profit for my business and myself, and by law, I can only make 28% profit.

[The Disillusionist]

I'm not eloquent enough to properly answer this, but I don't give myself enough credit, so here goes it!

The commodities and services are produced and utilized for a profit, they do get used. Its about profit entirely, a capitalist owns the means of production and works it themselves or has employees work it for them to procure profit by producing commodities and services with utility.

Hope that answers a bit :)

Going off of my own business: My employees and I produce for a profit, I buy their labor and pay them a wage, while trying to make profit for my business and myself, and by law, I can only make 28% profit.

A lot of the time "eloquent" just means "able to bury the point in piles of flowery sounding but ultimately meaningless crap." I'd say you covered it pretty well with this comment.

Capitalism creates markets for its products. 20 years ago, nobody knew that they just HAD to have the new iPhone 5 to be socially accepted, but nowadays that's a common occurence. That's just one example in which, although the products are used, they aren't really produced for use, it's all about profit. If business owners could sell you a phone that didn't work worth a damn, for twice the money, they would likely would do so in a heartbeat.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

In a sense capital produces for use only incidentally - or as a sort of necessary side-effect.
In another way, capital constantly creates new "needs" and the commodities one "uses" to fulfill those needs.
So, for example, in a just society, what is the "use" of a McDonalds hamburger? Presumably nothing - there's no real "need "for "fast" low-quality, ecologically unsustainable, mass produced grade F beef patties. No one is likely to "use" McDonalds hamburgers in a communist society. However, for now, they're certainly "useful". I guess. Sorta. Whatever. You get my point.

[Rafiq]

Capitalist production does produce things with use value, but it does not produce things for their use-value. That is the point.

GDU is also right to point out that capitalism also ideologically shapes the cultural, social - whatever - standards of necessity.

[Rafiq]

A lot of the time "eloquent" just means "able to bury the point in piles of flowery sounding but ultimately meaningless crap."

That's cute Lantz. I realize that it's rather humiliating to find your posts being completely discredited and torn a part - this is after all an internet forum, where our identities, confidence and ego actually matter, right?

Instead of expressing your frustration by being ignorantly dismissive - why don't you try to attack some of the actual points of my "meaningless crap"? I don't think comparing myself to him is even remotely appropriate, and I am not trying to be modest. But what this reminds me of are Zizek's empiricist critics - like Chomsky. Lantz, frankly, your standards of meaning and legitimacy, your understanding of what constitutes a point is what is really being buried in a heap of drivel. You keep telling us this and that - you say that my posts are meaningless, that I'm wrong, that I'm too "narrow minded" or whatever you want - but you fail to provide us with a single example. You say things, but you do not even attempt to demonstrate the viability that which you say. As though we should simply take your word as a given.

You want to call my posts overblown, flowery bullshit? Fine, but explain. Demonstrate. You obviously aren't the first person to have made such attacks, you're not being original - actually the only uniqueness may be the utterly distinct over-predictability of your posts. You can prattle on about my posting style, or how I conduct myself - but in the end, I attack the substance and points of my targets. I NEVER over-simplify or dismiss. Who are you? Some kid? And yet, look how seriously I'm taking you! You're intellectually shallow, and yet I take your posts seriously. Why? Because this is an internet forum. We can judge posts not by merit of their author, but by merit of their content.

You want to know what's really sad though? Everyone look back maybe a year or more at my posts. They were NEVER as "overblown" or "eloquent" as they are now. Why? Because they are conditioned as a result of constant straw-man attacks and misinterpretations. First, I was relentlessly misinterpreted and victim to endless straw-man attacks. I was accused of being vague and imprecise. And now, I am accused of spitting out "walls of text" and saying too much. Have you ever considered you wouldn't know anything at all of what I'm talking about, or would be predisposed to misinterpretation - If I didn't explain myself in a way this thorough?

[The Disillusionist]

See what I mean?

[Sinister Intents]

Did that really just happen? Also my perspective can be tantamount in an explanation for some from my experiences with being PB

[Rafiq]

See what I mean?

No, but we certainly can see you're a troll.

[The Disillusionist]

I wasn't trying to be passive aggressive, that was just a general comment that I happen to generally find true, it wasn't in reference to you whatsoever. It's not my fault you played right into it.

[Illegalitarian]

This makes me wonder what product variety will look like in a socialist society.

Capitalism encourages, thrives off of, exchange value, therefore you have many different people producing different kinds of the same product in pursuit of profit (to follow GDU's example, there is mcdonalds, burger king, etc etc etc).

Technically we don't need 30000 different businesses all producing the same thing, essentially, but i think such variety would still exist in such a world, perhaps an even greater variety, since capital would no longer be require for production.

[Red Star Rising]

No. Commodities are produced only for the exchange value within them. IDK about you but I live in the UK and in Greater Manchester we have 2-3,000 homeless people and about 25,000 vacant homes. Why? because capitalistic society is obsessed with the monetisation of all things even when we have the capacity to provide the basic use values for free. People are kicked out of their homes because they cannot provide the exchange value, even though nobody actually loses but the poor when we don't provide use values for everyone. The capitalist does not win, and Capitalism has convinced everyone that this is a problem.

[Zanters]

Echoing what others have said, only in a short and sweet way would be...

Capitalist only want to make profit. It is easiest for them to make profit by producing what people need and use. That is why they produce such things, only because that is where the money is at.

In capitalist economical terms, these things are called inelastic goods/services. Something, that even when the economy goes to shit, will still be produced and people will still buy it even if the price is higher. Like gasoline.

[John Nada]

The utility of a thing makes it a use value.[4] 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. A commodity, such as iron, corn, or a diamond, is therefore, so far as it is a material thing, a use value, something useful. This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities. When treating of use value, we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron. The use values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities.[5] Use values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange value.
A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use values, but use values for others, social use values. (And not only for others, without more. The mediaeval peasant produced quit-rent-corn for his feudal lord and tithe-corn for his parson. But neither the quit-rent-corn nor the tithe-corn became commodities by reason of the fact that they had been produced for others. To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange.)[12] Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
What chiefly distinguishes a commodity from its owner is the fact, that it looks upon every other commodity as but the form of appearance of its own value. A born leveller and a cynic, it is always ready to exchange not only soul, but body, with any and every other commodity, be the same more repulsive than Maritornes herself. The owner makes up for this lack in the commodity of a sense of the concrete, by his own five and more senses. His commodity possesses for himself no immediate use-value. Otherwise, he would not bring it to the market. It has use-value for others; but for himself its only direct use-value is that of being a depository of exchange-value, and, consequently, a means of exchange.[3] Therefore, he makes up his mind to part with it for commodities whose value in use is of service to him. All commodities are non-use-values for their owners, and use-values for their non-owners. Consequently, they must all change hands. But this change of hands is what constitutes their exchange, and the latter puts them in relation with each other as values, and realises them as values. Hence commodities must be realised as values before they can be realised as use-values.

On the other hand, they must show that they are use-values before they can be realised as values. For the labour spent upon them counts effectively, only in so far as it is spent in a form that is useful for others. Whether that labour is useful for others, and its product consequently capable of satisfying the wants of others, can be proved only by the act of exchange.

Every owner of a commodity wishes to part with it in exchange only for those commodities whose use-value satisfies some want of his. Looked at in this way, exchange is for him simply a private transaction. On the other hand, he desires to realise the value of his commodity, to convert it into any other suitable commodity of equal value, irrespective of whether his own commodity has or has not any use-value for the owner of the other. From this point of view, exchange is for him a social transaction of a general character. But one and the same set of transactions cannot be simultaneously for all owners of commodities both exclusively private and exclusively social and general.Source:http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch02.htm

Commodities have to be exchanged to acquire value, they're only exchanged if they have use-value for someone somewhere, and their value is determined in relation to other commodities with use-value. Some commodities use-value is for a medium to exchange for other commodities with value, which is how the capitalists use them. The value is the embodiment of labor put into commodities.
In a sense capital produces for use only incidentally - or as a sort of necessary side-effect. In another way, capital constantly creates new "needs" and the commodities one "uses" to fulfill those needs. So, for example, in a just society, what is the "use" of a McDonalds hamburger? Presumably nothing - there's no real "need "for "fast" low-quality, ecologically unsustainable, mass produced grade F beef patties. No one is likely to "use" McDonalds hamburgers in a communist society. However, for now, they're certainly "useful". I guess. Sorta. Whatever. You get my point.The hamburger is food. It comes from the factory farms, to the processing plants, storage, transportation, then put together by the servers at the restaurant. It's food, which has use-value. Normally one would have to make the food themselves, but the labor put in frees up time to do other stuff, like going to work or school. Work that used to be done often by the women in a household. Just because McDonald is garbage by choice of corporate doesn't mean workers who prepare food don't perform socially-necessary labor. Marx wrote about a bakeries who were adulterating food with dirt and saw-dust. It's the pursuit of profit that drives this.

Under socialism there will likely still be restaurants, probably more like communal kitchens.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I understand that socialism is based on production for use rather than for profit, and that capitalist production only produces commodity for exchange-value (profit). But thinking abou it, is this for use? If people need or have use for a certain commodity, the market would demand capitalists to produce that commodity; is this not producing for use-values, just with the middle-man (the boss) soaking up surplus value?


I think in order to achieve an exchange value, there needs to be some kind of "use-value" on some level -- even if it may not be all that "useful" in the abstract. It's more like exchange value shapes and governs how needs can be met within capitalism. All production is based on some use value in general, but making a sandwich for my friend creates use-value (maybe I give her food as a thank you because she helped fix my sink, etc), but making a sandwich for a gift or favor does not create exchange value in the same way as running a sandwitch shop. Here, exchange value must be created, the company has to be (profit) viable no matter how tasty (or not the sandwitch) and I can't survive in an profit system on payment in kind.




In another way, capital constantly creates new "needs" and the commodities one "uses" to fulfill those needs.


Yeah, good point, capitalist society does produce circumstantial "uses" and needs. Fast food imo is useful for a situation of urban workers in neoliberalism, food that you can grab and that will essentially sedate your children is very useful for single or double-working parent households. Of course the "use"of free time and food can be met in other, much more fufilling, ways but it's sorta half addressed in this way because it is the profitable way to address the needs. "Pet rocks" and other novelties have no apparent use beyond this novelty but that too might be a need created by a situation where people's lives are regimented, repetitive, and alienated. The use comes from a little purchased bullshit that can distract or amuse or act as a point of conversation.