A footnote on value theory, but let's not get into this / More tedious metaethics
"Justin Schwartz" <jkschw at hotmail.com>
>CB: Actually,I think Marx's exact formulation with the terms "value" and
>"substance" is in the heading of the first page of _Capital_, Use-value is
>the substance of value.
Right, but this doesn't mean there's a substance in the philosophical sense of a self subsistence entity or kind of being in which properties inhere.
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CB: Hard to say. As you know , Marx did a rather severe critique of all philisophy and philosophical senses prior to his own. So, he may very well have the Marxist philosophical sense of substance in mind here. It makes sense in that use , an activity and relation ( as you say below) are quite of the main stuff of Marxist, material reality. So , this _is_ probably substance in the Marxist materialist philosophical sense. Marx sort of cutely curls little philosophical concepts in and out of _Capital_.
Oh there's this too, on page one of _Capital_
"Use-values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange-value. "
So, use-values, according to Marx, are substance, in the sense of the substance of all wealth. However, wealth has philosophical sense in historical materialism.
Use-values are also material depositories of exchange-value in capitalism.
^^^^^
Brad's thought is that MArx thought that value is sort of spectral goo created by labor which becomes part of the physical constitution of commodities. This is a toral misconception. Value is a relational property that commodities have in virtue of being produced in a generalized market system that makes the amount of labor time expended onm them important in various ways.
jks
More tedious metaethics
> >>It's probably a good idea not to fetishize "value" as if it were
> >>some substance that ethical action intends to maximize.
> >
> >No one thinks value is a substance.
>
>Save Karl Marx, of course, who thought value was created by
>"productive labor", and could not be created or destroyed--but only
>transformed and transferred--thereafter...
>
>^^^^^^^^
>
>CB: The value of a commodity could be added to thereafter by more
>productive labor creating more value.
>
> It could be destroyed if the underlying use-value were destroyed. Value
>requires a use-value substratrum in Marx's model.
>
Use value's a relation too, for Marx: it's a relation of being useful for some purpose that someone has.
^^^^^^^^
Charles: Agree.
"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. [2] 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.
Every useful thing, as iron, paper, &c., 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. [3] So also is the establishment of socially-recognized standards of measure for the quantities of these useful objects. The diversity of these measures has its origin partly in the diverse nature of the objects to be measured, partly in convention.
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. 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. When treating of use-value, we always assume to be dealing with definite quantities, such as dozens of watches, yards of linen, or tons of iron. The use-values of commodities furnish the material for a special study, that of the commercial knowledge of commodities. [5] Use-values become a reality only by use or consumption: they also constitute the substance of all wealth, whatever may be the social form of that wealth. In the form of society we are about to consider, they are, in addition, the material depositories of exchange-value.
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>Marx's meaning of commodity value in political economy doesn't seem to be
>identical with "moral value" as on this thread. Marx does seem to make
>political and social values prior to "moral" values. His metaethics is
>politics and socialist sociality.
>
It has nothing to do with moral value. Nuclear bombs have use value, because the properties of plutonium make them useful for the immoral purposes some people have of killing millions of people.
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CB: Well, there may be a sort of subtle grading of Marx's analysis of the production of use and exchange value into his socio-politico-historio sense of what is to be done, that is his ethics, theoretical guides to action. I'm not sure Brad's suggestion is entirely wrong.
On nuclear weapons, I once argued on marxism-thaxis that there are anti-use values, and I specifically listed nuclear weapons as number one. This has to do also with development of a theory of the mode of destruction along side of Marx's theory of the mode of production, and actually, I would say briefly, the sense in which Gorbachev's theory of universal human values is a "deep materialism" in the Marxist sense of species being.
Of course, nuclear weapons are counted as use-values in terms of material depositories for exchange values on behalf of the merchants of death and the military industrial complex, their bottom lines,etc., etc.
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>
>SECTION 1
>THE TWO FACTORS OF A COMMODITY:
>USE-VALUE AND VALUE
>(THE SUBSTANCE OF VALUE AND THE MAGNITUDE OF VALUE)
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production
>prevails, presents itself as "an immense accumulation of commodities," [1]
>its unit being a single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin
>with the analysis of a commodity.
>http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#S1
>
>CB: Then he refers to "social substance"
>
>Let us now consider the residue of each of these products; it consists of
>the same unsubstantial reality in each, a mere congelation of homogeneous
>human labour, of labour-power expended without regard to the mode of its
>expenditure. All that these things now tell us is, that human labour-power
>has been expended in their production, that human labour is embodied in
>them. When looked at as crystals of this social substance, common to them
>all, they are Values.
>
>
>
>