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Posting here since this seems to have more to do with ontology than politics:
From Capital :
Fourth paragraph, around the start:
>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.
Some paragraphs later:
>A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it.
I don't understand, maybe someone more well read in Hegel/Marx can help me?
Full text: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#7b
>study Hegel all the time
>always excited to discuss Hegel
>oh boy a Hegel thread!
>it's another fucking marx thread instead
>>7852902
Sorry, I'm not understanding the problem?
a use value
>has no existence apart from that commodity
and something is commodifed
>because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it
and it is presented on the market.
The use value satisfies some sort of need/want, and becomes commodified when presented for an exchange value, i.e., placed on the market.
Woops forgot the main quote:
>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
But before he said that:
>This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities.
So is the use value independent of the minimum amount of labor needed to make it "useful" but its "usefullness" increases or decreases with changes in the amount of labor applied to it after the amount exceeds this "labour required to appropriate its useful qualities" point?
>>7852939
having not read Capital in a couple years, it sounds like he's saying there isn't an threshold for something being a commodity. if you only need x labor to "appropriate the useful qualities", i.e., make it presentable on the market, x+1, 2, 3, etc do not make them commodities +1, 2, 3, etc?
As in, something's commodityhood or commodityship is dependent only on there being some
>amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities
and of course presentation in a market setting. But you should know that it's been years since i read this/any marx.
>>7852948
>and of course presentation in a market setting
I don't think this is a necessary for there to be a commodity though?
From the second para of Capital:
>A commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another
So, it seems being presentable on the market setting or having an exchange value is not needed for a commodity to be a commodity.
>there isn't an threshold for something being a commodity
A commodity is by definition something that satisfies human wants (I presume being useful means being able to satisfy human wants).
Therefore, when he says you need some labor to appropriate usefulness in commodities that labor that amount of labor obviously makes it a commodity right? (Since an unuseful thing is not a commodity, appropriating usefulness to something is necessary for that something to be a commodity, for appropriating usefulness you need a certain amount of labor, therefore a certain amount of labor is necessary to make a commodity a commodity and this would be the "threshold" of labor required to make a commodity right? I presume by threshold you mean minimum requirement).
I don't see what you mean by x+1, x+2, x+3 not making "more commodities" though, but he has said that x+1, x+2, x+3 make commodities more useful >plainly, by the quantity of the value creating substance, the labour, contained in the article
So is he trying to say that there is this "threshold" amount of labor to make a thing useful and therefore make a thing a commodity but the usefulness (this property) of a commodity is independent of this threshold, but not independent of the amount of labor above and beyond this threshold?
>>7852976
Isn't it that same paragraph where he talks about if a farmer is just producing use values for his family, he's not making commodities because they're just satisfying an internal (i.e., not marketed) loop? So I think presentation on the market for exchange values very much animates things as commodities.
I don't really know, but I just had a moment of clarity where it's 2:44am and I'm sitting up on this Sumatran claymation board talking Marx, so I'm gonna sleep. Good luck, maybe other anons can help. Also it might be better to have this discussion when you've read past the first 5 paragraphs.
>>7852984
I don't remember this paragraph.
What a terrible definition of commodities he gave then, unless the farmer does not "satisfies human wants of some sort or another" with his "object outside [them], a thing'. What is a commodity then? Something that satisfies human wants but is also presentable in the market?
Someone please quote this paragraph if they find it?
>>7853012
>Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_value
I've probably confused you more than I've helped, sorry anon
>>7853012
That is the Classic Economic definition of a Commodity: A good or Service produced by human labour intended to be sold on the market.
Human economic arrangement prior to capitalism didn't center around the production of commodities; in-fact the term "commodity" wasn't even coined until the lat 15th century.
Also Pro-Tip: Don't get hung up on the first 3 chapters of Capital, Marx puts everything in extremely abstract terms here and expands on it more in-depth through the rest of the book.
Read the book through once and then re-read chapters 1-3.
Or you can get a companion guide to Capital: David Harvey has a very good guide on YouTube.
>>7853032
>Classic Economic definition of a Commodity
Well, he doesn't seem to use it at the start of the book though, but does later on, based on what the other poster said.
>>7853020
>Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities.
Well again, I don't think the Marx at the start of the book would agree.
>>7853032
And alright, thanks for the advice, hopefully it isn't filled with more inconsistencies like this.
>>7853064
What I cited in greentext was a quote from Marx, not just some line off wikipedia if that wasn't clear. But Marx being inconsistent is just Marx. Like the other anon said, read the whole thing. Volume I anyway
>>7852939
I think you're confusing the formative work required in making a thing ready for consumption for something that changes the intended use of a thing, it's quality.
>>7852902
A use-value is an object considered from a purely qualitative, individualized perspective. It's the properties of a thing itself and its utility.
Use value is not value. It's is a necessary internal determinate of value and is linked to value through exchange, but it is not value. Value is something purely social, the expression of a particular, individual labor that has been congealed into an object made to be exchanged, a commodity. Abstract labor is labor deprived of all qualitative characteristics, to purely quantitative "labour time."
A use-value is the particular. It cannot exist outside of the thing. Value is universal, it is expressed in commodities but does not reflect any particular one--rather it expresses the relation between all commodities in the form of money prices.
>>7852934
A commodity is just that so far in the first chapter. It later becomes commodity CAPITAL when Marx further explores the relationship between labour and value and determines the commodity's existence as the bearer and realizing through exchange of value.
>>7852939
If you look at a commodity in its pure particularity, it has no value. Value is something social. Once a thing has been priced its been brought into relation with the world of commodities, it has been brought into one pole of the universal money form of value. Don't get hung up on the magnitude of value. Focus on the forms of value, the relationship between commodities expressed through and within value in different forms, eventually generating money which is the only purely quantitative expression of value.
>>7852976
This is entirely wrong. Marx is not doing political economy. When one reduces the commodity to a thing that can be used and is made to be used then one is stumbling back into political economy, forgetting the particular social form of capital, its peculiar historicity. A commodity is the form of wealth in capitalist society, it is something produced so as to soak up as much surplus value as possible which then is appropriated through exchange by the total capitalist class.
Here's a handy note for the relation between value, use value, and labor.
concrete labor-->use-value
concrete labor-->use-value-->produced for exchange though, its exchange rather than its use is anticipated project of labor process-->given price on market-->exchange-value-->exchanged for a sum of money representing more than it cost capitalist-->abstract labor, labor reduced to a quantitative, socially recognized form.
