On Jun 25, 2010, at 6:57 PM, c b wrote:
> Homo Indeterminatus homoindetermin at aim.com
>
> c b wrote:
>
>> CB: And virtual gaming has use-value for them, it fulfills a want;
>> that the want springs from fancy, makes no difference.
>>
>> "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. "
>
> I don't think:
>
> "[T]he nature of such wants... makes no difference" in understanding
> the function of the commodity within the capitalist mode of
> production.
>
> entails:
>
> "[T]he nature of such wants... makes no difference."
>
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: I don't know if I'm missing a subtlety,but I'm thinking fancy
> wants can be the basis for a use-value. So, internet gaming can have
> use-value and be a commodity ?
Doug's original post signaled unease at the thought of people settling for virtual pay in exchange for labour, the former to be used significantly to fund online gaming-related purchases. Several other posters signaled sympathy with that unease - a sympathy which I also shared.
As if in response, you quoted a (famous, obvious, easily abused) passage from Marx, ostensibly challenging the legitimacy of the implicit (political, ethical, aesthetic) value-judgment in play. But the passage you quoted is merely laying out premises for the lengthy analysis of capital that follows: it pretty clearly *isn't* intended as the conclusion of a developed argument about the possibility of passing (political, ethical, aesthetic) value judgment of any sort whatsoever on this or that instance of (economic) use-value.
None of which is to suggest that justifications for (political, ethical, aesthetic) value judgements are simple, straightforward, or unproblematic. But your invocation of the intro passage from Marx as implicitly justifying your rejection of the originally implied judgment was bizarrely insensitive to context - essentially analogous, as a dialogic gesture, to a kind of evangelical scriptural quotation.