• TabularTuxedo@lemmygrad.ml
    5·
    2 days ago

    Could someone help understand use-values?

    Is use-value something a commodity has, or something a commodity is? (or is this question incorrect?)

    Relevant quotes from The Capital:

    In the following quote, he defines an use-value as being inseparate from the thing:

    The utility of a thing makes it a use value.[4] 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.

    Here Marx kind of talks about use value as separate:

    To resume, then: In the use value of each commodity there is contained useful labour, i.e., productive activity of a definite kind and exercised with a definite aim.

    • Commiejones@lemmygrad.ml
      5·
      2 days ago

      Use value is something that a commodity has because of how people use it. Rare earth minerals were essentially without any use value for most of history but now they have significant use value.

      The value is imparted by its use but it can only be used that way because of its properties.

    • Ember_NE@lemmygrad.ml
      6·
      2 days ago

      A commodity has use value in so far as it can be used by a human being to do something. Without humans it is just a chunk of matter. But the ways in which a human can use it is particular to it’s matter.

      These commodities are all made by human labor. The act of producing a commodity which is useful means that the labor is useful because it produces a useful commodity.

      • TabularTuxedo@lemmygrad.ml
        6·
        2 days ago

        I think it’s pretty interesting how much Marx probes each object with different lenses in his work. Like you said, a thing can be a natural-form (chunk of matter) or value-form (how humans see it), labor is abstract or concrete etc.

        I have read about dialectics before but seeing how Marx does it and how his German is translated, it confused me quite a bit, hence the question. Still, commodity is a pretty cool thing to study.

        Also, I liked your last sentence. Pretty great summary.

        • Ember_NE@lemmygrad.ml
          6·
          2 days ago

          Yes, a key part of reading Marx is understanding which set of abstractions he is using at a given moment. He operates on different levels of abstaction at different points and writes as if he is just testing them out to see if they work, so you need to think about which one applies at a given time.

    • cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml
      6·
      2 days ago

      I suspect this confusion may be just an artifact of the specific words chosen for the English translation.

      As far as i can tell in the German original text Marx uses the terms “use value” and “use item” somewhat interchangeably, at least in this section. But clearly, if you read further the entire section, which is about the distinction between the use and exchange value of an item, you see that what he means is that use value is a property of an item.

      Feel free to run the original German text through a few different translators to get a feel of what some alternative wordings might be:

      Your first quoted passage

      Die Nützlichkeit eines Dings macht es zum Gebrauchswert. Aber diese Nützlichkeit schwebt nicht in der Luft. Durch die Eigenschaften des Warenkörpers bedingt, existiert sie nicht ohne denselben. Der Warenkörper selbst, wie Eisen, Weizen, Diamant usw-, ist daher ein Gebrauchswert oder Gut. Dieser sein Charakter hängt nicht davon ab, ob die Aneignung seiner Gebrauchseigenschaften dem Menschen viel oder wenig Arbeit kostet. Bei Betrachtung der Gebrauchswerte wird stets ihre quantitative Bestimmtheit vorausgesetzt, wie Dutzend Uhren, Elle Leinwand, Tonne Eisen usw. Die Gebrauchswerte der Waren liefern das Material einer eignen Disziplin, der Warenkunde. Der Gebrauchswert verwirklicht sich nur im Gebrauch oder der Konsumtion. Gebrauchswertebilden den stofflichen Inhalt des Reichtums, welches immer seine gesellschaftliche Form sei. In der von uns zu betrachtenden Gesellschaftsform bilden sie zugleich die stofflichen Träger des Tauschwerts.

      Second quoted passage

      Man hat also gesehn: in dem Gebrauchswert jeder Ware steckt eine bestimmte zweckmäßig produktive Tätigkeit oder nützliche Arbeit. Gebrauchswerte können sich nicht als Waren gegenübertreten, wenn nicht qualitativ verschiedne nützliche Arbeiten in ihnen stecken. In einer Gesellschaft, deren Produkte allgemein die Form der Ware annehmen, d.h. in einer Gesellschaft von Warenproduzenten, entwickelt sich dieser qualitative Unterschied der nützlichen Arbeiten, welche unabhängig voneinander als Privatgeschäfte selbständiger Produzenten betriebenwerden, zu einem vielgliedrigen System, zu einer gesellschaftlichen Teilung der Arbeit.

      (I copied a little more than your short quoted passages so you can see the full context.)

      I think the following part illustrates this interchangeable use of the terms “use value” (in German “Gebrauchswert”) and “use item” (“Gebrauchsgut”):

      Ein Gebrauchswert oder [Gebrauchs-]Gut hat also nur einen Wert, weil abstraktmenschliche Arbeit in ihm vergegenständlicht oder materialisiert ist

      (My addition in the square brackets is just to clarify that Marx here, i.m.o., is using a typical German syntax where a compound word can be abbreviated when its first part was already used in the previous compound word.)

      Translated:

      A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it.

      I think this is some unfortunately imprecise use of language, but that is how Marx wrote it.