Psychology Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Commodity: In economics, a commodity is a raw material or primary agricultural product that can be bought and sold, such as gold, oil, or agricultural goods. They are standardized and interchangeable with other goods of the same type._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Karl Marx on Commodity - Dictionary of Arguments
Rothbard II 409 Commodity/Marx/Rothbard: Marx found a crucial key to this mechanism in Ricardo's labour theory ofvalue, and in the Ricardian socialist thesis that labour is the sole determinant of value, With capital's Share, or profits, being the 'surplus value' extracted by the capitalist from labour's created product. >Capital. But, in order to arrive at the labour, or quantity-of-labour-hours, theory of value, Marx, in his systematic work Capital, had to dispose of Other, subjective, claimants to determining value. He also had to demonstrate that value was somehow objectively embodied in the product (a material good, of course, since Marx, with Smith, had dismissed immaterial services as 'unproductive'). Marx begins Capital by concentrating on 'the commodity', an Object - (…), a material substance - which has utility for satisfying human wants. In this way like Ricardo, he leaves immaterial services out of the picture, and also omits studying the value of non-reproducible products, which have no ongoing costs of production. Like Ricardo, Marx also begins With the necessity ofutility, but, like his master, he quickly dismisses this basic fact as of little or no use in explaining 'exchange-value', the proportion in which commodities exchange for one another on the market. As in Smith and Ricardo, therefore, use-value and exchange-value, or price, of commodities are sundered from each other. How, then, explain exchange-value? Problem: How, in short, explain the proportions by which commodities exchange for each other on the market? Rothbard II 410 Solution/Marx: (…) „two things must (…) be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them so far as it is exchange-value, must therefore be reducible to this third... of which thing they represent a greater or less quantity.(1) RothbardVsMarx: Thus, Marx inserts his crucial error at the very beginning of his system. The fact that two commodities exchange for each other in some proportion does not mean that they are therefore 'equal' in value and can be 'represented by an equation'. As we have learned ever since Buridan and the scholastics, two things exchange for each other only because they are unequal in value to the two participants in the exchange. A gives up to x to B in exchange for y, because A prefers y to x, and B, on the contrary, prefers x to y. An equals sign falsifies the essential picture. And ifthe two commodities, x andy, were really equal in value in the sight of the two exchangers, why in the world did either of them take the time and trouble to make the exchange? >Barter economy. Value/measurement/RothbardVsMarx: If there is no equality in value, then there is clearly no third isomething' to which these values must be equal. Marx compounds his original error With another, assuming that if there were an equality of value, there is therefore necessarily some third tangible thing to which they must be equal and by which they can be measured. There is no warrant for this leap from equality of value to measurement of an objective third entity; the implicit, and fallacious, assumption is that 'value' is an objective entity like weight or length which can be scientifically measured against some third, external, standard. Utility/value/use value/RothbardVsMarx: Emphasizing by mere assertion that utility can have nothing whatever to do With exchange-values, a point crucial to his case, he claims that use-values have nothing to do With exchange-values or prices. This means that all real attributes of goods, their natures, their varying qualities, etc., are abstracted from, and can have nothing to do with, their values. By tossing out all real-world properties from the discussion, Marx is perforce left With goods as the embodiment of pure, abstract, undifferentiated labour hours, the quantity of allegedly homogeneous labour hours embodied in the product. >Value theory of labour/Marx, >Value theory/Ricardo, >Utility. Solution/Marx: Marx of course sees that there are great problems with this approach. What about the scholastic thrust: is the market expected to cover the costs, the enormous number of labour hours, needed to make a product in an obsolete way? If a book is printed, or hand-scripted, is the market going to cover the payment for the enormous number oflabour hours needed in the Rothbard II 411 hand-copying process? Is the market expected to pay the labour costs of carrying goods across land, as compared to shipping them by sea? Marx's way of disposing of these awkward questions was to create the concept of 'socially necessary' labour time. The determinant of the value of a good is not any old labour time spent on, or embodied in, its production, but only labour time that is 'socially necessary'. RothbardVsMarx: But this is a cop out, and evades the issue by begging the entire question. Market value is determined only by the quantity of 'socially' necessary' labour time. But what is 'socially necessary'? Socially necessary/Marx/Rothbard: Marx defines 'labour time socially necessary' as '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'.(2) This brings up a corollary problem: how to meld a myriad of different qualities and skills of labour into one homogeneous, abstract 'labour hour'? Here, taking up a hint from Ricardo, Marx inserts the concepts of 'average' and 'normal'. It all averages out. But how is this average obtained? It is done by weights, with higher quality, unusually productive labour weighted more heavily in quantity labour-time units than is the labour of an unskilled worker. But who decides the weights? Once again, Marx's crucial question-begging methodology comes into play. For Marx acknowledges that it is the market, its relative prices and wages, which determines the weights, i.e. which labour is more productive or higher in quality and in what degree than some other forms of labour. So market values, prices, and productivities are being used to try to explain the determinants of those same values and prices.(3) >Rate of profit/Marx, >Surplus value/Marx. 1. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I (New York: International Publishers, 1967), p. 37. 2. Ibid. p. 39 3. 3. Compare the discussion in David Conway, A Farewell to Marx: An Outline and Appraisal of His Theories (Harmondsworth, Mddx: Penguin Books, 198 7), pp. 83-9. - - - Habermas IV 492 Commodity/Marx/Habermas: Marx's approach owes its theory-strategic superiority over the designs developed since then at the same level of abstraction, to an ingenious coup: the analysis of the commodity form. By analyzing the dual character of the commodity ((s) with utility value and exchange value), Marx gains basic value-theoretical assumptions that make it possible to describe the process of unfolding capitalist societies simultaneously from the economic perspective of the observer as a crisis-like process of self-exploitation of capital, as well as from the historical perspective of the person concerned (...) as a conflict-prone interaction between social classes. In terms of value theory, the relationship between the exchange of labor for variable capital, which is fundamental to the mode of production and institutionalized in the employment contract, can be simultaneously explained as a control mechanism of a self-regulated reproduction process and as a reflection relationship that makes the entire accumulation process understandable as an objective, anonymous process of exploitation. Exchange value/Marx: is the medium that objectivistically covers and objectifies class dynamics at the same time, i.e. makes them more objective. The mechanism of the labour market, institutionalised under private law, assumes functions of the previously politically institutionalised relationship between social violence and economic exploitation. The class ratio becomes the basis of the Habermas IV 493 monetization of the labour force. The analysis of the class ratio must therefore start with the dual character of the commodity labour force. >Labor/Marx, >Labor Power/Marx, >Theory of Value._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Marx I Karl Marx Das Kapital, Kritik der politische Ökonomie Berlin 1957 Rothbard II Murray N. Rothbard Classical Economics. An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham 1995 Rothbard III Murray N. Rothbard Man, Economy and State with Power and Market. Study Edition Auburn, Alabama 1962, 1970, 2009 Rothbard IV Murray N. Rothbard The Essential von Mises Auburn, Alabama 1988 Rothbard V Murray N. Rothbard Power and Market: Government and the Economy Kansas City 1977 Ha I J. Habermas Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne Frankfurt 1988 Ha III Jürgen Habermas Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Bd. I Frankfurt/M. 1981 Ha IV Jürgen Habermas Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns Bd. II Frankfurt/M. 1981 |
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