this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2024
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Das Kapital book club 2024 (hexbear.net)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Format

  • Reading Volumes 1, 2, and 3 in one year. This will repeat yearly until communism is achieved. (Volume IV, often published under the title Theories of Surplus Value, will not be included, but comrades are welcome to set up other bookclubs.) This works out to about 6½ pages a day for a year, 46 pages a week.

  • I'll post the readings at the start of each week and @mention anybody interested. Discuss the week's reading in the comments.

  • Use any translation/edition you like.

Resources

(These are not expected reading, these are here to help you if you so choose)

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

At risk of spamming this thread (I have work tomorrow so getting my thoughts out now) I wanted to pose a starter question just to get some discussion flowing.

What are use-value and exchange-value? Why does Marx highlight these two things and their relationship in the first chapter?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Use-value is the value of an object in the eyes of the consumer, the actual value that it provides when it is used. The use-value of an apple -> it nurtures your body.

Exchange-value is the quantifiable value of an object in an exchange. How does the value apple measure against an orange? The exchange-value of an apple -> the number of socially necessary labor time to produce it (according to the labor theory of value).

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Nice. So use-value relates to use, and exchange-value relates to exchange. That's a good starting point, but still seems a bit murky ... both definitions refer to "value" but in seemingly different meaning... can you explain that difference in meaning?

I think these two paragraphs give an initial description of the two, although Marx indicates it is incomplete:

Use-value vs. exchange-value

The utility of a thing makes it a use value. 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. 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.

Exchange value, at first sight, presents itself as a quantitative relation, as the proportion in which values in use of one sort are exchanged for those of another sort, a relation constantly changing with time and place. Hence exchange value appears to be something accidental and purely relative, and consequently an intrinsic value, i.e., an exchange value that is inseparably connected with, inherent in commodities, seems a contradiction in terms. Let us consider the matter a little more closely.

Two things that jump out at me:

  1. Marx oscillates between use-value being something commodities are and something commodities have as a property (being versus having). So depending on context, a commodity is a use-value, or it has use-value.
  2. Exchange-value is a relation between commodities, so unlike use-value, we are no longer talking about a single commodity in isolation.
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Marx oscillates between use-value being something commodities are and something commodities have as a property (being versus having). So depending on context, a commodity is a use-value, or it has use-value.

As a side note, we could extend this and say that something can gain a use-value as part of a historical process, right? For example, on the first page:

The discovery of these ways and hence of the manifold uses of things is the work of history3

3... The magnets property of attracting iron only became useful once it had led to the discovery of magnetic polarity.

The magnet never changed, but through scientific development became useful.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

As a side note, we could extend this and say that something can gain a use-value as part of a historical process, right? ... The magnet never changed, but through scientific development became useful.

Yeah very much so.

For example a lotta the aim of "production" in consumer societies as we have in the core is to make basically anything gain more use-values so there's more opportunities to sell stuff and more possibilities to get higher prices from induced scarcity.

This ties into Marx's point ofc about stuff needing to be an object of utility to have value. Much as, if something is no longer useful it is no longer valuable, if something is suddenly useful it is suddenly valuable.