Questions Concerning Marx's Capital

edit

He already did, that's why it goes from 1 to 24.

get it?

"1. What is the distinction made by Marx between use value and exchange value? How do we determine each form of value?"

The first is rather simple:

use-value = "Use value or value in use is the utility of consuming a good [commodity]", source: wikipedia. This is of course subjectively determined.

Exchange value = similar to price, but actually is the economic value of one commodity compared to the economic value of another commodity (when traded), so e.g. 10 bikes = 1 car.

"Strictly speaking, the exchange value of a commodity is for Marx not identical to its price, but represents rather what (quantity of) other commodities it will exchange for, if traded." source: wikipedia.

... I suppose.

Edit: didn't explicitly answer the question posed. Use-value = subjectively determined for and by each individual. Exchange value = well, look at the car/bike trade example.

Actually, Marx's category of use-value is not subjectively determined. This is even clear from the wikipedia page on "use-value" if you look at the part where Marx is quoted:

With regard to exchange-value, it is essential to closely read what Marx actually says in Chapter 1. The two factors of the commodity for Marx are use-value and value, exchange-value being "the mere form of appearance ... not its [the commodity's] proper content.” ("Notes’ on Adolph Wagner,” in Later Political Writings, 242). For example, a certain quantity of wheat is observed to have "many exchange values instead of one." (Capital, Penguin, 127) The price of the wheat, however, would reflect its exchange-value in terms of the money commodity.

It is important to not rely on secondary sources, and many websites have really terrible explanations of these concepts, for example: http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/e/x.htm

Then I would say that I personally believe use-value is subjectively determined. The utility I derive from consuming a pizza mozzarella is wholly different from the utility a person derives from consuming a pizza mozzarella who absolutely hates a pizza mozzarella. Utility is subjective and cannot be measured, it logically follows then that use-value is subjectively determined. We can objectively determine that a commodity has use-value (when a sandwich is consumed the consumer does so because he considers it to have use-value), but not how much use-value (i.e. we cannot objective, that is, with a mathematical formula--or something alike--determine how much he liked it, or assume that everyone likes it equally).

This is slightly misleading (if not technically wrong) since price is simply the quantity of the money commodity that one can exchange a thing for. So exchange value is equal to price, though admitidly, not identical to it.

I think exchange value is basically the same as price, Marx couldn't introduce price in the beginning of the chapter yet because he didn't have money yet. But it seems from chapter one that exchange value is the form of appearance of value, and money is the form of value. This distinction makes the most sense to me if we equate EV with price. Even in a bartering situation we could say ten bicycles is the "price" of one car. But Marx is not really concerned with barter, EV would not be an important category for Capital if it simply referred to a pre-capitalist form of exchange, it would then mystify value and not be a critical term. So I am presently fairly convinced that we can equate EV with price.

So how you know something is overpriced? those things are not the same.

exchange value = average work needed to produce a good.
price = actual amount of money wanted for a good.

you see the price with your eyes, but you can only see the worth with ur thoughts.

i really reccommend this video lecture series
http://davidharvey.org/

its not 100% libertarian, but david harvey gave them with the whole revolutionary left in mind, (anarchists included). plus he sums up what economic determinism is and why its bad, which is really crucial to understanding Marx. he also explains some ways in which Lenin misunderstood Marx's method, which is interesting

its really easy to misunderstand parts of Capital, and Harvey has been teaching/studying Capital for over 20 years. hes pretty reliable

First off, use-value IS subjectively determined -- it becomes a meaningless concept if its not...

Exchange value is the price of a good if supply and demand are in equilibrium, it is the price around which real (actual market) prices fluctuate around and tend towards (in the long run). So exchange value regulates price but is not the price except under certain unlikely situations.

I discuss classical economics (and its socialist uses) in an unfinished appendix to An Anarchist FAQ:

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/blogs/afaq/secCapp.html

I hope that it clears up some of the questions.

Use-value is NOT subjectively determined, at least not directly in most cases. Most commodities are not end-user consumer goods, but inputs to other businesses.

If I run a local van distribution company and need a tanker-load of fuel every two weeks for my fleet of vans, I can't suddenly decide this month that I'm going to run the same routes on half the fuel, because it's use value is subjectively determined.

The use value of the fuel commodity is that it will propel my vans a certain number of miles, on average (depending on urban or distance driving etc). Nothing could be less subjective.

No company would need to pay anything for any of it's inputs if that was the case. From paper clips and paper to electricity and office floorspace. If the utility of all those use values were subjectively determined then I could go to Dave Cameron and say, "Guess what - I'm going to save a shit load of money to pay for the NHS by running the entire civil service from this cupboard under the stairs with weekly supplies of a small candle, a pencil stub, two envelopes, one stamp, a bent pin and a fiver credit on a pay as you go mobile... and this handy iPhone app.

That Marx quote from dave c again

What people think of when they talk about mozzarella pizzas are a specific type of commodity - ones who's consumption is aimed at the reproduction of labour power - and a living human being - note that these are not quite the same thing, even if they are united in the same body.

In the case of the former, there is a passage in Primo Levi's "If This Is a Man" where he talks about the Nazi bureacrats attention to the preparation of the gruel the prisoners on work detail were fed on. With typical attention to detail the bureacrats of death had sat down and through experiment and compiling statistics and tables of death rates, had detemined what was the absolute minimum actual food content (mostly barley iirc) they could use for concocting the gruel that would maximise the useful work life of the prisoners before they dropped dead of starvation and overwork. Taking into account the short expected lifespan of the prisoners due to disease and the selections. This is the use-value of food as applied to labour power, which, again, is not subjective.

Of course, as a 'sovereign' consumer, raised above the condition of bare life, my choice of a quattro stagione over a mozzarella pizza is an exercise not simply in maximising my calorie intake, but my subjective enjoyment of the eating experience. Naturally the conventional marginalist neoclassical economists would prefer me to take this model of use value as the starting point for understanding the workings of capitalism. But it is only a useful place to start if your intention is to mystify capitalism, rather than penetrate its inner workings beneath the surface of appearances.

What you're describing there is not exchange value, but value simpliciter. Exchange value is the "form of appearance" of value and as such is the same as price, but can be expressed in other goods besides just money and perhaps differs from price in that respect. I don't think this is a really important distinction, nor do I see a lot of effort towards terminologically distinguishing the two in Marx. Since Marx is mostly concerned with capitalism, exchange value is, for all intents and purposes, price.

In Vol. 1 and 2 you could make that assumption; it's very different in Vol. 3. Hence the so-called "transformation problem".

Khawaga, you also seem to be confusing value and exchange value. There is no transformation problem between exchange value and price. The exchange value is the price, although it can be expressed in quantities of goods etc. also. In other words, if we want to make the distinction we can say that the price is an expression of exhcnage value. The problem is how value converts to price.

No, I am not. In Vol. 3 Marx demonstrates how the capitalist operates with prices (the world of circulation) so that he will think that profit results from exchange rather than production. Exchange value is directly related to value as its form, but it's a category that can only come from realizing that value is created in the sphere of production proper and that this value is then confronted with and other value in the form of use-value. Mistaking exchange value (a value form) for price is, in part, what Marx critiques bourgeois political economists for. If exchange value was simply equal to price Marx would never have bothered with even giving them two different names. Even in the first chapter of Vol. 1 price comes in as just another abstraction that leads to the commodity/money fetish.

The thread is obviously going off in different directions, but I think that some of these questions are easily cleared up when we look at what Marx says in Capital. I am assuming of course that we are talking about Marx's Capital, the topic being "Questions Concerning Marx's Capital."

1) Certainly there are people who don't like Marx's use of the category "use-value," but if we simply look at the first few pages of Capital, where he introduces the concept, we see that he clearly states:

We can of course look at the 1859 Contribution or the First German Edition of Capital as well, and we will find that Marx consistently introduced the concept in this manner, referring to the physical body of the commodity.

2) Value and Exchange-value are distinguished in Capital. You can see the development of this distinction in Marx's critique of Bailey in Book III of Theories of Surplus Value. Bailey wanted to treat value as nothing but the myriad of exchange-relationships that a commodity can have. For Marx, however, the ratio in which two commodities exchange does not directly express an equality in value. Having said that, values are not for Marx a sort of average price around which market prices fluctuate. See, for example, page 269 of the Penguin edition of Capital:

Marx does not develop this point here, but his reasoning becomes clear in Volume 3, where "prices of production" are dealt with.

This is a different issue altogether, the capitalist calculates his rate of profit, which is the difference between the amount he charges for a commodity and the amount it cost to produce it (constant+ variable capital), rather than the rate of surplus value (to which investment in constant capital is irrelevant), which directly bespeaks the genesis of profit in production. The exchange value of a commodity is the amount of another commodity that it will exchange for. The price of a commodity is the amount of money it will exchange for. If we are talking about capitalism, just about everything exchanges for money, so a commodity's exchange value is its price. Marx talks about commodities exchanging above and below their value (which happens constantly in the course of things due to the average rate of profit) but never above or below their exchange value.

I also think the latter state of affairs is why Marx says average prices don't directly correspond with values, only on the scale of the entire economy and over time could they be said to balance. Of course, it could never be proved whether or not this is the case...

Bzfgt, I think most of what you say is correct, but I think what you say about why Marx says values are not average prices is misleading, although it's quite possible that you agree with the following: Marx develops the distinction between values and average prices on the basis of the idea that different spheres of production employ different ratios of constant to variable capital. Even though more value is produced in certain spheres, rates of profit tend to equalize. Average prices do not fluctuate around values, but tend over time to be higher or lower than values in any given sphere of production.

There is a place in Book II of Theories of Surplus Value where Marx deals with this issue. As it sort of elaborates the critique of Smith and Ricardo I referred to in my last post, it is worth looking at. Understand that Marx is here describing the classical theory:

Marx then elaborates his conception as well:

Dave, that is precisely what I meant--prices don't average out to values because a portion of surplus value in sphere of production A. forms a part of the profit in sphere of production B. because of the emergence of a general rate of profit (and of course total surplus value is identical with total profit). I just looked at my post again and that wasn't clear, but there's no argument here.

I can only laugh at the attempts being made here to "explain" to Derelitto what Karl Marx really meant. It is a fitting tribute to Karl Marx's obscurantism. Even the most elementary concepts remain clouded in smoke and mirrors.

Let's get real basic here and try to stay on point.

What is the difference between "use value" and "exchange value"?

And, once we have mastered that what is plain old "value" without a qualifying adjective?

First of all I think all three are abstractions that only "exist" in an "ideal" state and that in the real world each is but the bull’s-eye of a target that the system is shooting at but usually misses. Despite the fact that it misses the bull's-eye 90% of the time it is what defines the way the system functions. It's like an "orbit."

"Exchange value" is the "ideal price" not the real price. It is the price that a commodity would sell for if there were nothing to interfere with the exchange of commodities based on the labor time it took to produce them. (Sort of like the idea of "gravity" pulling a 500 lb cannon ball and a feather down to earth at exactly the same speed, all else being equal which it never is) Prices are sometime lower than the "exchange value" and sometimes higher but if a commodity goes for very long "exchanging" above or below its "exchange value" it will either crash or people will quit creating that commodity.

"Use value" is the value that a commodity has for the end user. A 16 foot 2X4 has a use value in building a house or a shelf or something else. It will have more use value if it is Douglas Fir and less use value if it is made out of particle board. It can be somewhat subjective depending on what the end user wants but, again, it "circles around" a kind of material based "ideal" use value. A 2X4 made out of pecky cedar is worthless except possibly as decoration.

So just what is "value" as opposed to "exchange value" or "use value"?

I may be wrong since so many people think this, but I'd like to see a quote or something that suggests this.

"The value of a commodity equals the quantity of paid and unpaid labour contained in it. The average price of a commodity equals the quantity of paid labour it contains (materialised or living) plus an average quota of unpaid labour."

says it all.

@Mr Roxwell: Any attempt to quantify use-value will fail because it is indeed a subjective matter. You are taking the path for common sense - the human brain deciding what means of production fits a purpose - or not (less) - as an inherent side of the means of production itself, which is not materialistic. Making an objective matter out of the the totally subjective use-value - and calling it exchange value - that is bourgeois science of economy by the way. Not that you did exactly that, but your just 1 step away from calculating use-values (which of course is not possible). you could only do it for uses for the same purpose, but things can be used for different purposes and most thing dont even fit another purpose other then the one they are made for.

A use-value is a useful thing, such as a door or window. Exchange-value is, as said, similar to price, and it is expressed in terms of the physical bodies of other commodities; for example, if I can exchange my 1 door for 20 yards of linen, then the exchange-value of the door is 20 yards of linen. However, as Marx explains, in production for exchange the commodity also features as the product of abstract labour, "human labour-power expended without regard to the form of its expenditure." (I think that Marx explains abstract labour quite clearly, so I won't elaborate). As a product of abstract labour, it is a value. This is how Marx defines the term; insofar as commodities are products of abstract labour, they are values. As abstract labour, labour has only quantitative rather than qualitative content, and this quantitative content forms the magnitude of value. The commodity both is a value and has a value of definite magnitude in essentially the same way that a use-value both is a mass and has a mass of a definite magnitude as a corollary.

Marx's concern is, ultimately, with production for exchange and the form taken by this production (that of abstract labour), and hence the character of the product as a product of abstract labour (ie. as a value. I have heard some people say that they accept the analysis of abstract labour, but not value, and this is absurd). Fortunately enough, capitalism would not exist without production for exchange, and indeed is itself simply a mode of production, so having investigated this helps a bit. It would have been pretty silly to try to investigate capitalism while ignoring the analysis of production, after all. It's a good thing nobody does that, then.

Of course, price equals value on the aggregate because abstract labour only becomes such through being exchanged away, and hence through featuring as concrete labour for another, and through the product therefore featuring as a price, and therefore because a product only becomes a value through becoming a price. But that's somewhat straightforward. In addition, it is also clear that, as a result, profit on the social level cannot be explained through simply price-value deviations, which is Marx's point when refuting the idea that profit is made through increase of price over value (as, of course, this is only relative, and when one commodity's price increases above its value another decreases). In social production, such as, say, that within the patriarchal family which Marx discusses in Capital, the product, in its physical form, becomes the form of expression of a social relation, the producer's relation to society (the family, in this case), that is, the physical form through which it exists. This relation is not an invisible bond of some sort, but something continually produced and reproduced through social production. The same applies with value, albeit here production is both private and social, and therefore the relation is established indirectly through the relationship of commodities on the market and therefore appears as a property of objects, as Marx explains.

I'll leave it at that for now, though.

Well, one could always read chapter 1 of volume 1 of 'Capital', where Marx defines it. It's a start, I mean.

Correct; it's essentially tautologous, in a sense, that price equals value on the aggregate. No evidence would prove the theory of value any more than it would prove whether or not bachelors are in fact unmarried.

Again, within the framework of the OP, this is wrong. Use values are not totally subjective. Otherwise the miles per gallon rating of my car would be meaningless. I could just go to the petrol station, put 5 litres into the tank and decide that today I subjectively felt that that 5 litres of petrol should take me on a journey of 300 kilometers. I would run out of petrol before completing my journey. If I was completely insane I could decide that purchasing the exchange value equivalent of the 5 litres of petrol in sugar would do equally as well, and put that in my tank. I wouldn't go anywhere (except maybe the psych ward).

Use values are perfectly easy to quantify. Barrels of West Texas Intermediate crude and #11 Sugar are quantified and sold on commodity exchanges every trading day. But they can only be quantified in terms of the properties proper to their concrete materiality (Gebrauchsgestalt). What they cannot be is commensurated by those properties so as to permit their exchange on the basis of equi-valence. For that you need value proper. You can grasp the appearance of value as exchange value (i.e. in what proportion oil, sugar, wheat, pizzas... exchange for each other) without necessarily having a clue what the nature of the underlying value actually is.

The quantification of use value is an operation all producers carry out constantly, in order to determine the appropriate amounts of the different use values you need to consume in the process of producing your end product. Use value is not to be confused with the utilitarian notion of utility when reading Marx.

I still hold that exchange value is equivalent to price because in Capital I EV is a phenomenon and, together with the phenomenon of use value, suggests a "third thing" behind appearances which is value. But "ideal price" could only be said to exist after we have a theory of value, in other words it is not a phenomenon. Thus exchange value, as a phenomenon or appearance, simply is the ratio in which commodities exchange. As I said, since so many people think otherwise, I'm willing to admit I may be mistaken but I haven't seen a good argument or any quotes that suggest I am.

bzfgt, if you take only Vol. 1 as the basis of your argument you would be correct. As far as I remember Marx just makes the assumption, for the sake of clarity of analysis (i.e. just like he assumes that all commodities are sold at their value and other reductions such as that), that e-v is the same as price. He does this because in the logical argument he is making in the first two volumes it doesn't really matter. He is constructing an ideal functioning capitalism in order to do his immanent critique of political economy. In Vol. 3, and in the Theories of Surplus Value as Dave C pointed out, he logically introduces price as a different beast than exchange-value.

What Dave c pointed out (and what the quote expresses) was the difference between price and value. In Capital I, Marx assumes that commodities sell at their values. Nowhere in Capital Volume III does he claim that price deviates from exchange value, which is not the same thing as value. Exchange value is the form of appearance of value. What appears is the quantity in which a commodity exchanges for other commodities. I understand what you're claiming--you're claiming that value is a quantity of labor, which appears as a quantity of commodities (usually money), but as the same quantity. But I don't think this makes sense, it would not make sense to call ev a form of appearance if it were a quantity that almost never appears, and when it does only appears accidentally or coincidentally.