File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9710, message 116


Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 13:37:58 -0400 (EDT)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Value and Women's Unpaid Work



Value theory is hard and in the end I don't think it makes much sense.
However, you are right that what's a use value in a particular case is
historically constituted. For example, an internal combustion engine
transported back to the middle ages would have use value only as doorstop
because there would no petrol to run it. As to use value created solely or
mainly by marketing, I don't see why this is a problem. Remember that use
value is not embodied labor. It is a matter of whatever properties a thing
has to satisfy human wants, which of course are historically relative.
Only "value" as opposed to use value is embodied labor. The value (strictu
sensu) of the Izod shirt--well, as I said, value is aggregate; one can't
sensibly talk for Marx about value on that level except as an extreme
abstraction in a highly simplified model.

--Justin

On Tue, 14 Oct 1997, Rob Schaap wrote:

> G'day Justin,
> 
> You wrote:
> 
> >Use value is the potential of something to be used, what makes
> >it useful. That's part of capitalist value. Things with no use value can
> >have no value in the capitalist sense. It's also something that pre-exists
> >and could post-exist value. This computer would be just as good for
> >computing if it were made in a nonmarket society, and in just the same way.
> 
> In one sense 'things with no use value can have no value in the capitalist
> sense', but can it not be argued that capitalism can, through latter-day
> marketing techniques, actually produce use values?  I'm thinking about
> symbolism.  If I want a T-shirt, I can get one for $5.00.  I'm alone at the
> generic T-shirt basket, because everybody else is at the adjacent basket,
> where identical T-Shirts with a brand name across the tits is going for
> $25.00.  In a Veblenian (is that a word?) sense, the brand-name constitutes
> a use-value (sign for brand and its advertising-produced associations as an
> implicit association with the owner of the emblazoned tits).
> 
> Again, minimal labour invested in the bit that dramatically enhances the
> exchange value (the brand logo) but still *real value must be generated
> somewhere to sustain an exchange value directly attributable to a use value
> conjured up by capitalism alone*.
> 
> >Um, value Marx defines as the expression of the fact that making useful
> >things requires effort, a completely ahistorical notion. But value becomes
> >"objective," he says, only in market societies where useful things are
> >produced as commodities.
> 
> Making the more expensive T-shirt more useful is the result of effort
> applied by advertisers and marketers, not T-shirt producers.  This makes
> that investment of labour very much a *historical* notion, because it is
> conceivable only under late capitalism.
> 
> As advertising/marketing is huge business and typically manifests like
> this, this is significant, isn't it?  I see that this is why it is
> misleading to speak of value in regard to a single commodity, but is the
> above line of thinking one way we might keep the relationship between
> aggregate value and aggregate exchange values tenable in the 'age of
> information'?
> 
> This is hard.
> 
> Cheers,
> Rob.
> 
> 
> ************************************************************************
> 
> Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.
> 
> Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
> Fax:    02-6201 5119
> 
> ************************************************************************
> 
> 'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
> lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)
> 
> "The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
> into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
> the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
> the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)
> 
> ************************************************************************
> 
> 
> 
> 
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