Critique of Political Economy questions

[JazzRemington]

I've begun reading Critique of Political Economy, as best as I can regarding I'm currently in school, and I have a few questions about use-value and exchange-value. I understand that use-value is subjective and exchange-value is objective, but there are a few things I don't understand.

First, what is a use-value and exchange-value? Is it that commodities ARE use-values or exchange-values or do they HAVE use-values or exchange-values?

Second, where does use-value come from? Is it simply people's subjective usefulness of a commodity? Does EVERYTHING have this trait automatically or does labor have to bring it out?

Third, what does Marx mean when he says that the labor that creates use-value is unique and cannot be combined into one collective labor type? Does this ahve to do with the idea that before division of labor, everything was individually produced to have use-value, that is produced to be used and not exchanged?

[KC]

First, what is a use-value and exchange-value?

Use-value is the fact that it is useful to people. If it is useful to people then it has a use-value. That use-value that it has is the way in which it is useful to people. For example, a shirt has a use-value to me because I like to wear shirts. Its use-value is its wearability as a shirt. Food's use-value is that it can be eaten.

Exchange value is the value at which one object is exchanged with another on the basis of amount of labour contained within it. Say commodity A takes 2 standard labour hours to make it, while commodity B takes 4 standard labour ours to make. The exchange-value of commodity A is then two units of commodity A for every one unit of commodity B. This value changes with the money form, and also changes with the price form.


Is it that commodities ARE use-values or exchange-values or do they HAVE use-values or exchange-values?

Commodities are a certain type of use-value. Commodities are use-values, but use-values aren't always commodities. The use-value is a physical property of the commodity (the wearability of the shirt, the edibility of the food, etc...) but the exchange-value is something we attribute to that particular commodity (i.e. it exists only in our minds).


Second, where does use-value come from? Is it simply people's subjective usefulness of a commodity?

Yes. If something is useful to somebody then it has a use-value.


Does EVERYTHING have this trait automatically or does labor have to bring it out?

Almost nothing has a use-value without labour being expended to create that use-value. Granite is great, but in order for it to have a use-value it must be mined. All resources must be extracted from the earth, which implies labour.

Things that are use-values that don't have labour would something like air.


Third, what does Marx mean when he says that the labor that creates use-value is unique and cannot be combined into one collective labor type?

Could you please provide the quote and a link to where you got it from (you can find it on marxists.org)?

[ComradeRed]

First, what is a use-value and exchange-value? Is it that commodities ARE use-values or exchange-values or do they HAVE use-values or exchange-values?Well, Marx says "The utility of a thing makes it a use value."

Use-value, as a proper noun (e.g. A use-value is ....), refers to a commodity. If it is used describing the property of a commodity, it is obviously referring to utility (its basically a boolean property whether there exists utility or not).

Exchange-value is the value of the commodity (naturally).


Second, where does use-value come from? Is it simply people's subjective usefulness of a commodity? Does EVERYTHING have this trait automatically or does labor have to bring it out?
It's relative to the observer :D

You may not have any use for a Linux manual since you use Windoze, but I use Linux and will end up needing it. So there is use in it for me, but not for you.

Marx points out that the origin of this need is unimportant in Das Kapital.


Third, what does Marx mean when he says that the labor that creates use-value is unique and cannot be combined into one collective labor type? Does this ahve to do with the idea that before division of labor, everything was individually produced to have use-value, that is produced to be used and not exchanged? Well, Marx notes in Das Kapital:

A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article. The quantity of labour, however, is measured by its duration, and labour time in its turn finds its standard in weeks, days, and hours.

Some people might think that if the value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labour spent on it, the more idle and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in its production. The labour, however, that forms the substance of value, is homogeneous human labour, expenditure of one uniform labour power. The total labour power of society, which is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labour power, composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of the average labour power of society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary. The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time. The introduction of power-looms into England probably reduced by one-half the labour required to weave a given quantity of yarn into cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact, continued to require the same time as before; but for all that, the product of one hour of their labour represented after the change only half an hour’s social labour, and consequently fell to one-half its former value.

Not that that answers your question, but it is tangential.

[JazzRemington]

Could you please provide the quote and a link to where you got it from (you can find it on marxists.org)?

From the first printing (circa 1970) of the International Publishers edition of the book, page 29:

"Since the particular material of which the use-values consist of irrelevent to the labour that creates exchange-value, the particular form of this labor is quite irrelevent. Different use-values are, moreover, products of the activity of different individuals and therefore the result of individually different kinds of labor."

Would my interpretation of this passage be correct?

The answers I have been given seem well enough to put me at ease, , but I still don't understand one thing: how can a use-value turn into an exchange-value? I understand the simple notion of exchanging the use-value for another, but how does the labor that makes up the use-value turn into the labor that makes up exchange-value? Is it that we take the labor necessary to make a particular use-value, homogonize(sp) it into social/general labor, thus creating the exchange-value?

[KC]

"Since the particular material of which the use-values consist of irrelevent to the labour that creates exchange-value, the particular form of this labor is quite irrelevent. Different use-values are, moreover, products of the activity of different individuals and therefore the result of individually different kinds of labor."

He's just saying that different kinds of labour go into different use-values. Sewing and blacksmithing are two different kinds of labour, for example.


but how does the labor that makes up the use-value turn into the labor that makes up exchange-value?

The use-value is the particular product we are talking about. A shirt is a use-value (and in capitalist society these use-values are commodities). The labour put into that shirt is the exchange-value.


Is it that we take the labor necessary to make a particular use-value, homogonize(sp) it into social/general labor, thus creating the exchange-value?

Yes. Marx's whole point was that it took different kinds of labour to make the use-value, but that the total labour embedded within it is the exchange value. All different qualities of labour would be converted to the same scale and then added together to get the exchange-value.

[JazzRemington]

But why not just use the individual labor within a use-value? Why must it be combined into social labor for exchange?