Ange writes:
>and, it has recently struck me that there are marxists for whom the
>category 'use value' works precisely as this natural element, this
>foundational real which somehow operates outside the terms of
>capitalism, which is defined as consisting of exchange values.
Yeah, this throws me no end. I mean, if we pay extra to have, say, 'Benneton' daubed across our chests, it's because we discern a use value in this. It shows we buy expensive clothes and points to the associations we think advertisers have been successful in associating with that brand in the public mind. We cop a desired identity from a sweater - that's a use value, but a historically specific one.
We could point out that what we're actually doing is paying extra so that our tits (and arses) might help advertise someone else's goods - someone who, at first blush at least, should be paying us for the deployment of our salient bits.
All very historically specific anyway - but, it seems to me, all about use values nevertheless.
>someone went so far as to define sexism and racism as the production
>of use values; which are somehow distinguishable (historically and
>analytically) from exchange values, and which are not inherent to the
>social organisation of capitalism. here then, the (anti--capitalist,
>but not anti-racist or anti-sexist) solution would be to drop those
>unnatural exchange values and commit ourselves to use values as the
>real expression of a human ontology - distinguish between the bad bits
>and the good bits of the commodity form.... if i believed this, i
>would believe baudrillard's _mirror of production_.
I suppose use values have to come in or go out somehow or other. Either through alienation at large and marketing in particular, or through some more consciously exercised negotiation. It's always gonna be hard, eh? Gotta be done, though.
Cheers, Rob.