"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. The nature of such wants, whether, for instance, they spring from the stomach or from fancy, makes no difference. Neither are we here concerned to know how the object satisfies these wants, whether directly as means of subsistence, or indirectly as means of production.
Evey useful thing, as iron, paper, &xc, may be looked at from the two points of view of quality and quantity. It is an assemblage of many properties, and may therefore be of use in various ways. To discover the various uses of things is the work of history...."
Charles Brown
>>> Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> 03/14/99 05:16PM >>>
Roger Odisio wrote:
> Angela wrote:
>
> >my understanding of marx's comments on use value is that he saw it as
> >a) only relevant to the buyer; and b) relevant insofar as what is
> >defined as use is socially validated as a need.
>
> Yes. Use value is important in so far as it is socially validated as need,
> i.e., it enters into the basket of goods that determine the reproduction
> cost of labor. But the aim of capitalist production is exchange, not social
> usefulness.Use value is outside, irrelevant to, the logic of capital.
It seems as though Roger may confuse "socially validated" with "useful in some objective sense," in which case his "intrinsic value" would still be hanging around. Heroin is useful. A $10 bet in Las Vegas is useful (until lost). The usefulness may be either purely fanciful or even destructive. The use value of a hydrogen bomb is to hang around in storage someplace and count as part of a horde of hydorgen bombs.
If use value were intrinsic much of the advertising industry would be pointless.
If the advertising people can convince consumers that stones left over from gravel digging are useful, then those stones achieve a use value.
There usually (not always) is some relationship between the physical features of a commodity or service and its use value, but that relationship can be pretty distant and ephemeral.
Carrol