Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 17:38:40 -0700 (PDT)
From: Copenhagen-AT-pseud.pseud
Subject: M-INTRO: What commodities could say if they could speak


How does Marx know what commodities would say if they could speak?  Marx tells us that if commodities could speak, they would say this: our use-value may interest humans, but is does not belong to us as objects.  What does belong to us as objects, however, is our value.  Our own intercourse as commodities proves it .  We relate to each other only as exchange values.  Hans goes on to explain to us in his own words what this means to us as humans.  He states, the speaking commodities exemplify a symmetric counterpart of commodity fetishism.  While people act as if they were thinking that the social properties fo commodities com from nature, commodities relate to each other as if they were thinking that the natural properties of commodities come from the humans.  
 
Economists make themselves the mouthpieces of commodities in many instances.  The book quotes that: "Value is a property of things, riches (ie use value) of man.  Value, in this sence, necessarily implies exchanges, riches do not."  
 
Marx later states that it is true that use values are wealth only in relation to humans, but it is by its own PROPERTY that something is a use value and therefore an element of wealth for humans.  Take away from a grape the properties which make it a grape, and the use value which it has as a grape for humans disappears.  So in essence the properties of things that are made use of by men and which express a relation to their wants are the use value of the commodities.  


		
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