That was a typo on my part, I apologise.
To put Phaedros’s question another way and expand on something I said above: Are you arguing that value, and/or use-value and exchange-value, exist, in some metaphysical sense? Or is it a useful mental tool with which to understand social phenonema? I approach marginal utility and subjective value as useful tools, and hence why I ask whether all of Marx’s distinctions are actually useful. The marginal-subjective approach seems much simpler, explaining something like the water-diamond paradox without all these logical contortions. How is it deficient, and how is Marx’s approach superior? Or has Marx simply found the truth, and that’s that?
This may be getting ahead of our current discussion, but this is why I hesitate to read or give much consideration to Marx. I imagine it is also why economists have long ignored Marx, and not because they’re idealogues or tools of the bourgeouise or lacking class consciousness or what-have-you.
Nope, I didn’t. Sorry, but in the real world, you know reality, use-value, i.e. the characterstics of the commodity as you say, do factor into any exchange. That means that Marx’s argument is empirically proven false.
pizza,
so use-value is simply a unit? examples: tons, yards, pounds.etc.
Value is a social relationship, yes, that exists. Use-value is the useful qualities of an object, yes that exists. It’s also a useful tool. It’s not really metaphysical.
Actually the bourgeoise tend to be, on the whole, far more class-conscious than the proletariat, which is why they’re in control of things and not us.
“There’s class warfare all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” – Warren Buffet
60 thousand dollar pen would like a word with you, other absurdly expensive items that preform a basic use would also like a word with you.
That would be a measure OF use-value. Use-value’s are qualitative, not quantitative. Quantitative is what is ascribed to exchange-value.
“60 thousand dollar pen would like a word with you, other absurdly expensive items that preform a basic use would also like a word with you.”
Lol, oh boy. That was exactly my point. There is something about a particular pen that makes someone want to buy it for 60,000 dollars. One of its characteristics and also one of its uses. While that use isn’t writing, it’s still one of the uses.
Whether or not someone wants to buy something is not what we’re dealing with here though. What we’re dealing with is what determines Value. You’re proejcting your apriori assumptions onto this matter by assuming this has anything to do with demand.
We are far from such a transformation.
No i’m talking about use. It’s just that you have a convenient apriori assumption about what the use of a pen should be. Even then, that use, writing, is just as abstract and not inherent to the pen as the social use of that is.
What unique use does this pen have that would make it worth 60 thousand dollars?
As a social status symbol, personal satisfaction, its beauty to the person that bought it, etc.
The same could be said of any other pen.
pizza,
I think i got what you are saying… basically value to Austrians is use value to Marxists.
For example:
Austrian: Value is subjective and can only be determined through individual action.
Marxist: Use-values become a reality only by use or consumption
If I am buying a pen worth $60,000, then I am using the pen to store value. I could use a gold bar as a door stop the same as I could use a computer chip as a ballmarker.
This idea that certain objects should be diefined simply by what they can do is asinine. Use in many cases is subjective.
“The same could be said of any other pen.”
Indeed, it could.
This sounds more or less accurate, I have a comrade who is doing research on the similarities between Marx’s conception of money and Mises’s that should prove interesting.
So you think that, any object can become a storage of value?
Yes use is subjective sure I don’t disagree with that.
Thus showing the impossiblity, in your analysis, of the existence of a 60 thousand dollar pen.
Isaac-
Marx also then wants to separate exchange value from use-value. Whereas in Austrian theory, I believe, they are tied up into the same thing, prices. The usefulness of separating the two is beyond me at this point.
“Thus showing the impossiblity, in your analysis, of the existence of a 60 thousand dollar pen.”
That’s some interesting logic.
Your analysis seems to completely ignore exchange-value
If price is determined by use and two objects have the same use they should cost the same, yet they do not.