A commodity is something which is on the market. So, yes, for it to be a commodity, it must be for sale. The two things are equal. They mean the same thing.
Results 21 to 37 of 37
terms
Fuc = fixed unconsumed capital
c = constant capital or raw material
Fc = consumed 'fixed capital'
s = surplus value
v = variable capital or paid labour time
Nuv = new use value
Department A
940Fuc+ 20c+20Fc +20s +20v= 940Fuc + 80Nuv
80Nuv = SNLT valueof the product/commodity/ new use-value of one weeks labour etc
Rate of profit if exchange value of the product = its value
P’ = 20s/{940Fuc+20c +20Fc+20v}
20/1000
2%
Department B
40Fuc + 20c+20Fc +20s +20v = 40Fuc + 80Nuv
Rate of profit if exchange value of product = value
P’ = 20s/{40Fuc+20c +20Fc+20v}
20/100
20%
If P’ =10%
Then exchange value of the product of department A must be 160.ie 80 above its value
Exchange value of B must be 70 ie 10 below its value.
---------------
we need to have fixed unconsumed capital on both sides of the equation otherwise it is 'repugnant' to the calculation of the rate of profit.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...67-c1/ch09.htm
A commodity is something which is on the market. So, yes, for it to be a commodity, it must be for sale. The two things are equal. They mean the same thing.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
So, a master crafted chair and a machine, mass produced chair which are both for sale are both commodities, and thus both contain use value and value?
The mass produced chair can probably be made in a few minutes, even counting the time for producing the raw materials. The master crafted chair takes maybe a hundred hrs to make.
As long as there is a market for the hand made chair, isn't the socially necessary labor time for the hand made chair a hundred hrs and for the mass produced chair a few minutes?
Does Rubin quote Marx on this?
This seems to say that the price of a commodity is equal to the cost of production plus average profit and that the price is not coincident with the labor value of the commodity.
This just seems to me to contradict Marx's basic theory, that exchange value (around which price fluctuates) is determined by socially necessary labor time. And that the capitalist does not pay the full value of this labor time, but appropriates the surplus time as profit.
Does Marx specifically say that his theory of profit and value is different for simple and for "complex" commodity production?
I understood Marx to say that commodity A takes, say, 1 hour labor to produce. The capitalist pays for 1/2 hour of labor. The extra half hour is ultimately where profit comes from.
If you take two different industries and average their two profits then of course you will get an average rate of profit. But it doesnt follow that the average rate of profit controls their prices.
One baseball player may have a .300 average and another may only hit .150.
The average is .225. The 'price' or value of the .300 is not determined by the average of the two players.
Exchange value, according to Marx, is something inherent in the commodity itself. (chap 1, section 1, of Captial.) Although, of course, the exchange value is not fixed but it changes as productivity increases or decreases.
If the market for 'a hand-made chair' is different to the market for 'a machine-made chair', then the socially-necessary labour time is different yes. But if you count 'a hand-made chair' at 100hrs and 'a machine-made chair' at an hour, as both being part of the supply of a generic category of 'chair' (if the buyers don't care in other words) then the socially-necessary labour-time is weighted in favour of whatever prouces the bulk of the chairs.
Revolutionising production (introducing machinery) brings down socially-necessary labour-time.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
I think exchange value was or is a theoretical or perhaps purely logical construct of his analysis of simple commodity production .
Based on the idea that value which is inherent in the commodity is equal to the exchange value.
Thus exchange value is the phenomenological ( I think he used that expression early on) form, manifestation or for simplicity but perhaps a bit loosely the perceivable effect(s) of inherent labour time value.
I mean basically that is how science works.
You make empirical observations about relationships or equalities, or in particular two things being equal, in one way or another etc.
And say they are not in fact equal they are different manifestations of the same thing.
That goes back to ancient Greek logic, not that scientists really ever give a shit about that much.
Although it is easy for chemists; like coal is a different manifestation of diamonds.
I mean the alchemists started on that making the sense perception form of one thing change into another and back again.
And, not really believing in magic; understanding that the content must have stayed the same.
Maybe it is my imagination but these theoretical particle physicists seem to be throwing around the word ‘manifestation’ a lot recently
Karl used that kind of example in volume one with the two isomers of butyric acid or something.
Two totally different things, to the sense perceptions that is, but in fact just different rearrangement (and not much of one) of the same number of carbons hydrogen’s and oxygen’s.
Maybe it is an accident or maybe not but Karl did Democritus as part pHD thesis.
Democritus said that the complexity and the associated changes in the material world was just about changes in the arrangement of basic building blocks (elements).
No net change in ‘content’ but just forms like lego land and a mechano set.
As with Karl the labour time inherent in ‘sense perception’ or phenomena of spindles, its content, re manifests itself in cloth or whatever.
‘Sense perception’ was a big deal in the 19th century as was ‘phenomena’.
The stuff about commodities selling above and below their value because of the average rate of profit is the prices of production, and more famously the ‘transformation problem’.
The issue is that the total value of all commodities, say to be facetious, in a one stop Wallmart is equal to their total labour time value.
I actually really think that what Karl did was fine; the gas laws and the ideal gas equation never worked but except in ideal conditions but was the bedrock and launching pad of all modern science.
We plodded on constructively with the reductionist abstraction and used what we learned to explain the anomalies that we knew existed from the beginning.As Karl did.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/mar...67-c1/ch11.htm
On what Karl said as opposed to experts like Rubin; which is a good point.
I think Karl started to drop the term exchange value in Volume III and started to use the term ‘market value’ instead.
Outside simply commodity production or in other words in capitalism I am not sure what the practical difference is between market value and exchange value.
You can take that or leave it
[One problem with Volume III is that it isn’t a pure chronological development of ideas; I thing Grundrisse is better despite its problems for that.]
However if you take we can have;
Capital Vol. III Part II
Conversion of Profit into Average Profit
Chapter 10. Equalisation of the General Rate of Profit Through Competition.
Market-Prices and Market-Values. Surplus-Profit
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx...94-c3/ch10.htm
That is just found from a two minute search and flick through of my highlighted volume III that I read 10 years ago.
Karl of course hacked into and analysed his own predicates like socially necessary labour time as well.
I mean if some chemists come up with an idea to produce a purple dye with a 1/000 of the labour time of producing a purple dye by another method but it requires massive amounts of as yet theoretical and un-invested capital.
What is the SNLT does it transform overnight as the result of an idea?
Why do people come up with weak ideas re hand made chairs versus factory made ones when there are better ones like Johan Vermeer paintings?
There was Dutch art dealer of Vermeer paintings operating successfully in the 1930’s onwards who was prosecuted after 1945 for selling Dutch works of art to the Nazis etc.
He pleaded innocence on the basis that they were forgeries; the use values crashed overnight.
Well, obviously, if buyers don't care whether they get the hand-made chair or the machine-made chair then the artisan chair maker cannot possibly compete. In that case the socially necessary time for making the chair becomes the time for making the machine made chair.
But, assuming the chair is the average chair for sale on the market, then what happens to the exchange-value at the point of sale? The use-value goes to the buyer. What about the exchange-value?
Marx says the exchange-value is the expression of value, of socially necessary labor time. Once the chair leaves the market it no longer is a commodity, but the money paid for the price is still in the market.
I guess my question is how can socially necessary labor time in one instance be
an "intrinsic" part of the chair and an instant later be represented only in money? It sounds like exchange-value can get up and walk around, like a fetish. Of course, since exchange-value is a relation then this, I suppose, make sense.
Since commodity value is a social relationship there should be no reason why it can't move around or take different forms with different objects of labor.
This discussion has really helped me. Thanks
Well, other people have come up with ideas re coats and linen. By the way, when you say "Karl" I assume you mean Marx?
Is the Vermeer painting a commodity?
No, it doesn't. I laid this all out really carefully several posts ago. It only becomes the socially-necessary labour-time if there are enough machines and workers to make all the necessary chairs. Marx talks about the average labourer and average machinery - these are abstractions from actual labourers and actual means of production, so I established some examples of 'actual' (hypothetical, but not abstract) conditions.
If the workers in the factories can produce all the chairs (it takes 1 worker-hour per chair) necessary, then socially-necessary labour-time = 1hr. If they can't make everything, then socially-necessary labour-time is more than 1hr, because in order to fulfil demand for chairs, craft-workers and hand-tools must be used, so Marx's 'average worker' becomes not a machine-minder but 90% machine minder ('below average skill') and 10% craftsperson ('above average skill') equalling 'average skill (of non-existent worker)' - which is why I think the 'worker of average skill' is an abstraction.
I'm not sure what you're trying to get at here. The chair still has something we might think of as 'potential exchange value'. If the buyer wants to sell the chair, they can still realise the exchange-value in it. Its exchange-value is the average amount of labour to replicate it. You want a chair? You have to pay for the labour in the chair. You could buy some wood but you'd have to make the chair yourself (and it would take 100 hours, even though it only takes 1hr to make a machine-chair). If you sold it, the 100hrs of your labour would be exchanging against the 1hr of a machine-user's chair.
The exchange value doesn't 'go' anywhere. It is embodied in the commodity itself, like mass. Things don't lose mass if you put them on the floor. But you've changed (temporarily) their relationship to gravity and potential energy. The exchange value is a quality the commodity possesses. It has 'an amount' of it, which is the socially-necessary labour-time involved in its production (or, rather, replication).
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
. Marx
In other words, if you examined a commodity, you could never determine how much the exchange-value, value, or price of it was.
Yet the exchange value stays with the commodity even after the sale?
If you examined a chair outside of the market, how would you know what its exchange value was?
Exchange value is a relationship between things. Things don't 'exchange' in isolation, they exchange for or with something.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
But exchange value is an inherent, intrinsic, unsubstantial reality in a commodity. And, if exchange-value is a [social] relationship between things, then what happens to the exchange-value when the commodity is sold, exchanges hands?
How is a social relationship transferred to a buyer, as happens with
use-value?
Take, for example, what happens when you buy a new car. As soon as you drive it off the dealer's lot it loses half its value. Has the original exchange-value been converted into money? Since money is a commodity, the dealer received the use-value and the exchange-value of the money?
For one thing, it is impossible to measure use-value in money. Nobody goes around thinking, "I have $20k use-value in this car, and I am using it up at $100 per day. On the other hand, people do say, "This car says that I have a higher social value than you do." Maybe that is how a social relationship is exchanged, it becomes a fetish, as Marx might have meant.
The social relationship between people is transferred onto a commodity. If that is the case, then exchange-value, the social relationship, is transferred to the buyer.
What happens to the mass of an object when I give it to you? How can the mass that I'm supprting suddenly be a mass you're supporting? It's almost like magic.
Because the mass is the gravitational attraction between the object and the earth (ie, a relationship).
The exchange value of the object is the relationship of a commodity to other commodities. It may be inherent in the object (like mass) but it is only detectable as a relationship (which is why I mention gravity).
MORE...
A car loses half its value not because there's anything intrinsically wrong with it (and really it hasn't lost exchange value) but 'a new car' is something that is rather difficult to obtain. It competes in the market against other new cars. A 'second-hand car' is competing against other second-hand cars. It's quite easy to get a second-hand car, there are loads of them, because most cars are second-hand. That's just a supply-demand thing.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
I think weight is the gravitational attraction between the object and the earth. An object has the same mass where ever it is in the universe, although the mass of an object can change depending on its speed.
And exchange value is measured in time, or socially necessary labor time. A commodity's exchange value has a certain mass (in hours, days) and also a price which would be the measure of its exchange value. Marx says price is the monetary expression of value...price is the expression (in kg, $) of the relationship (gravity, exchange value?)
So, weight is to mass ... as price is to exchange-value, value. I wonder if Marxists have placed too little emphasis on price and monetary theory?
Why?
Price is somewhat ephemeral. It depends on all sorts of things. Supply. Demand. Fashion.
Marx carefully explains in his discussion of where profits come from that he is positing a situation in which neither supplier nor buyer is capable of unduly influencing the market (the bit that 'ancaps' and others with the 'mud pie argument' never bother to read) and getting to the nub. Yes there are 'profits' to be made from buying short and selling long but that isn't what Marx is talking about; he specifically rules out those sort of market manipulations and posits a capitalism that actually does what it claims to do (ie, be a mechanism for rationally fulfilling resource demands).
And... yeah, mass, weight - I'm not a physicist. Weight (the relationship of mass and gravity) is what I'm trying to get at. In this case the socially-necessary labour-time corresponds to the mass of an object. The weight (relationship to external universe expressed as gravitational field) is the socially-necessary labour-time in relation to other commodities. Exchange value is the relationship of the labour-time of one commodity compared to the labour-time of others. You can't look at a single commodity in isolation and say 'what is this worth, where is its socially-necessary-labour-time?' because it is only worth something in relation to other commodities.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
