Category: Steve

Brust’s Law is as follows: Truth is counter-intuitive.

I remember the first time a teacher explained to me that a gas took up more volume per weight than the same substance as a solid.  That was obviously ridiculous; gas is malleable, so clearly it can be pressed into a smaller space than a solid would.  Right?  Of course, further explanation  clarified the matter.

I remember Clausewitz explaining that wars are always started by the defender, which is blatantly absurd–and also true.  The one who attacks doesn’t want a war, he wants, for example, to conquer territory, or control resources, or subjugate a population.  If the one who was attacked simply permitted this to happen, there would be no war.

It is absurd to think that a single cell organism could, over eons, evolve into a human being.

It is preposterous to think that an object heavier than air could fly.

But, there it is, truth is counter-ntuitive, and it only becomes intuitively obvious when we begin to understand the subject well enough to change our intuitions.

It seems intuitively obvious that, if you raise the labor cost (ie, wages) of a commodity, the price of the commodity will rise.  Intuitively obvious, but wrong (even the bourgeois economists stopped trying to sell “the wage-price spiral” after about 1977).  Why?  Don’t worry, we’ll get there.  But for now, as we go through Capital, when something strikes you as counter-intuitive, that means it is something to pay close attention to, not a reason to shut down your brain.

We now have three concepts: use-value, exchange-value, and value.  (I’m not sure under what conditions Marx capitalizes the V in value; it seems inconsistent, but I’m guessing there is a reason for it somewhere).

Use-value refers to the material particulars of the commodity; size, weight, chemical composition, shape, &c.  Exchange-value refers to the quantity of that commodity that can be exchange for given quantities other commodities.  Value refers that which is carried by the commodity that permits it to be exchanged for definite quantities of other commodities; we might say that exchange-value is the reflection of value, or how value is expressed in the market.

Value, in other words, is the expression of human labor in the abstract– by abstract, we mean that, when discussing value, we no more care about the particular nature of the labor that produced the commodity, then we care about the use-value.

Page 38: “We have seen that when commodities are exchanged, their exchange-value manifests itself as something totally independent of  their use-value.  But if we abstract from their use-value, there remains their Value as defined above.  Therefore, the common substance that manifests itself, whenever they are exchanged, is their value.”

“A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialized 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.”

Well, okay, that makes sense.  But what if the labor is, well, badly done?  How do you derive value from shoddy work (unless you’re Microsoft)?

Page 39: “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 and unskilful the labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be, because more time would be required in it’s 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 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 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.”

So then: the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of labor necessary for it’s production, not the amount that, in a given case, it actually took.  If it takes me twice as long to make a brick as it takes most people,  it doesn’t mean my bricks are worth twice as much, it means I’m about to be fired from my job as a brick-maker.

But this brings up the next question: How do we compare the labor of me, an humble brick-maker, with that of, for example, the architect who created the blue-prints for these townhouses my bricks will be used on?  He is paid a great deal more than me, presumably his labor is worth more.

Glancing ahead, it seems we will be getting to that.  For now, I will quietly mediate on socially necessary labor time.

Page 38: “If then we leave out of consideration the use-value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour.  But even the product of labour itself has undergone a change in our hands.  If we make abstraction from its use-value, we make abstraction at the same time from the material elements and shapes that make the product a use-value; we see in it no longer a table, a house, yarn or any other useful thing.  Its existence as a material thing is put out of sight.  Neither can it any longer be regarded as the product of the labour of the joiner, the mason, the spinner, or of any other definite kind of productive labour.  Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.”

Whew!  Okay, let’s see what we have here.

We have established the each commodity has the following properties: It satisfies a human want (a use-value), and it can be exchanged for other commodities (exchange-value).  Removing from consideration the particularities of that commodity, we are left with all commodities being products of labor.  Fine.  But if we removed the particularities of the use-value, we must also remove the particularities of the labor that produced it.  That is, if we are considering an abstract commodity, we must also consider the labor that produced it to be equally abstract.

While this appears at first to be a flight of fancy, in fact it seems to be quite true, and an important revelation about the working of the market.  While each commodity is, in fact, the product of particular labor to produce a particular use-value, these things, under certain circumstances, really do vanish.  That is, the form of labor that produced the broom is unimportant to someone who wants to sweep; and the use to which the purchaser plans to put the broom is unimportant to the individual who wants to realize it’s exchange value.

But even more important is this: If exchange were based on exchanging the labor of the cabinet-maker with the labor of the farmer, we would be living in a drastically different world.  That isn’t how things work.  Instead, the product of the cabinet-maker is exchanged with the product of the farmer.  This exchange works because we are exchanging things with a common element in them, and that is, not the particularities of different kinds of labor, but what is common to them–that they are labor.  Thus we speak of human labor in the abstract.

I have no idea if my restatement has made this clearer, or less clear, or made no difference; but it helped me get a handle on it, which was the point of the exercise.

“Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous human labor, of labour-power expended without regard to the mode of its expenditure.  All that these now tell us is, that human labour-power has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in them.  When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them all, they are–Values.”

And here I run into a brick wall.

I understand what Marx means by use-value; that seems a clear, unambiguous, and useful term.  I also understand what he means by exchange-value; that makes sense too.  But what in the Hell does he mean by “Values.”  Can anyone help?  I hesitate to continue until someone can help me make sense of this.