r/Marxism • u/Bright_Annual7672 • 6d ago
Marx’s Theory of Values
I just started reading Marx’s Capital, and I want to make sure that I’m understanding the first bit correctly. Forgive me if my questions don’t make sense, I’m just a high school student.
1) Is use-value how useful a commodity is to us, and is exchange-value a representation of how much we could get for a commodity on the market?
2) How is value different from exchange value?
3) Is it a contradiction that Marx writes that labor is a criterion for exchange value and that he acknowledges that labor can produce something useless?
Edit: I think I understand it now! Thank you to all for your smart and detailed responses. To be honest I didn’t expect a Marxist community to be this welcoming (no offense lol). I’m sure I’ll be back with more questions sometime soon!
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u/Public_Utility_Salt 6d ago edited 6d ago
Q1 is Correct, although use-value is binary. Something either has a use, or it doesn't. Any kind of use is counted, like looking at a beautiful flower is a use of that flower.
This also answers Q3. Because use value is binary, all that is needed is that it has it. Then, in order for it to be exchanged, and have an exchange value, someone must also be willing to pay for it. Exchange value is not a measure of how useful an item is.
Q2. Exchange value is a representation of value. This basically means that exchange value does not always have to be exactly the same as it's value. For some periods of time, it can deviate for various reasons. Marx, however, mostly investigates situations where value is represented by exchange value.
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u/ScalesGhost 6d ago
There's actually some debate about whether use-value and usefulness are identical, whether use-value changes with context, etc. It's likely that it is, though. Exchange value is *not* what you could actually get for a good at any given time, that's price. It's not 100% clear how exactly exchange value is different from price, the common answer is that exchange value is price minus a lot of the distortions that happen in actual price setting, i.e. setting items at 9.99 instead of at 10, discounts, coupons, etc. But again, it's not 100% clear.
"Value" is a nightmare to figure out. I'll leave it at that. The easy explanation is that it represents the socially necessary labor time (read: add all the needed labor time together) to produce a good, while exchange value is about what you can exchange a commodity for. Value doesn't necessarily influence exchange value in any way.
This is another nightmare, since there are almost no commodities that are *actually* useless. Everything sufficiently small can be used as a throwing weapon. Anything sufficiently heavy can be used as exercise equipment *in some way*. With enough time and energy, almost anything can be recycled. Marx is trying to get around the "well if I just dig a really big whole, will it have Value" bit here, and is doing it rather sloppily imo. Marx does not assume that labor defines exchange value.
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u/Bright_Annual7672 6d ago
Thank you so much your explanation! I really appreciate the help, this book has been very difficult to get through. I updated my question #3 in the post, do you mind responding to that as well? Thank you again!
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u/ScalesGhost 6d ago
I agree that Capital is very hard, no one should start with it, and even if you have read a good bit of Marx, a companion book is probably a good idea.
Concerning your third question, first of all, I don't remember him saying that labor is the source of exchange-value, though I might have just missed it. Labor is the source of "Value", which is different than exchange-value (in hindsight, it was a really dumb move to just call it "Value" without specifying).
Let's say he *did* say that, though. It would still not be a contradiction. If he did say this, he would've meant it the sense of "You need labor to create exchange-value, but not just *any* labor will do". Just like, yes, humans need water to survive, but not just *any* water, it needs to be relatively clean, free of salt, etc.
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u/Bright_Annual7672 6d ago
lmao this is my first venture into economics at all… kind of thought it would be a bit more sexy tbh.
Thank you for your answer to all my questions by the way, I feel a bit silly with #3 now lol 😂
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u/Hopeful_Vervain 6d ago
Your definition of use-value seems correct, it's the ability of a commodity to satisfy human needs, it's a qualitative value. Exchange-value is the quantitative value, it's only expressed in other commodities so in that sense you're sorta right to say it's how much we can get for it on the market, it's a relative value in a system of exchange. It's still worth mentioning tho that money, as a commodity, also fluctuate in exchange-value so it's not a thing we can steadily measure as price.
The value is determined by the socially necessary labour time to produce it. It's basically the average amount of labour needed to produce the commodity under normal circumstances, it depends on the current level of technology and skills of society. The Exchange-value is a way to quantify commodities so they can be exchanged, it reflects the underlying social relationships of exchange.
It's not, because if something has no use-value, it has no exchange-value either. If it has no quality, it can't be quantified in terms of other commodities, it's of no use so it won't be exchanged for something else. Only useful and necessary labour is counted in the creation of value.
You seem on the right track tho keep it up! Capital can definitely feel confusing at first, it present things in a way that can feel unintuitive compared with how we usually approach things in education (less dialectically), don't worry if you have to re-read parts or if it takes time, nothing's wrong with you and you're definitely doing well! I think it gets better after the first few chapters too which can be very very dense in informations.
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u/_ComradeRedstar 6d ago
I highly recommend S4A's audio book of Capital Volume 1 if you want to get explanatory commentary along with a high quality reading of the material.
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u/LeKaiWen 6d ago
Is correct. No comment to add.
Value is the social human cost of producing the exchangeable useful item, whereas exchange-value is what the item is actually exchanged for.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean, maybe you can rephrase a bit? Regarding the use-value, it can change I guess. But as far as the economic side of things is concerned, the only relevant thing is whether or not someone is ready to buy it. What they decide to do with it afterward isn't immediately relevant.
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u/Bright_Annual7672 6d ago
Thank you for your explanation! I clarified what I meant by my question in the post. To be honest, this whole thing confuses me and whenever I feel like I understand I realize I don’t.
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u/EctomorphicShithead 6d ago
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691190075/capital
New translation is much easier to read, and the audiobook is far better than any of the others I’ve heard
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u/Whole_Ad_4523 6d ago
1 is more or less correct, though the use value doesn’t have to be ‘useful’ in any straightforward way. 2 is a good question, because most new readers miss that value qua value stands apart from the use value/exchange value dichotomy - others seem to have answered it. For 3, I’m not sure if the question follows from the first point. If something has no utility, it won’t be able to be sold. If I make a bunch of glasses with holes in the bottom, I’m going to have a hard time selling my commodity on the market. But the question goes deeper, in that it is not Marx who equates all kinds of different concrete labor as homogenous and fungible abstract labor but the market for commodities (including labor power) itself. The benchmark is the amount of labor time that is “socially necessary,” such that for example the value of a hand weaver’s labor power plummets when textile mills open up, because on average the amount of labor necessary to make clothing has also plummeted. Nothing has changed with regard to the utility of clothing or the labor of the weaver
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u/Bright_Annual7672 6d ago
Thank you for your response! In my third question, I’m basically asking whether Marx thinks that all labor is useful. I guess I just missed the socially necessary part. Oops! Thanks again!!
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u/C_Plot 6d ago
When overproduction or underconsumption occurs in a crisis, some portion of the commodities produced prove not useful and eventually spoil or are deliberately trashed. In that case of unforeseen demand deficiencies, the labor might count as useful, because the producers expected to realize the value through circulating their commodities, but the spoilage or trashing of the excess commodities counts similar to consumption of value such as takes place in the households of productive workers or any other households.
Related to this usefulness is that production must be directed at producing something socially necessary, not merely personally lucrative. If for example, a gold rush sends thousands of workers into a region to pan for gold, mine for gold, and so forth—even though the industrial demand for gold and the liquidity preference for hoards of gold are already sated—then the gold extracted by labor, and minted as coin or forged into bullion bricks, might involve tremendous expenditure of labor, but no value is produced. It is personally lucrative for the producers, because they can then buy more of the other commodities produced elsewhere, with the gold indistinguishable from any other gold, but that merely means the SNLT previously expended upon producing the socially necessary portion of gold is now spread across even more extant grams of gold circulating and in hoards. SNLT has thus been wasted from a social perspective (but not wasted personally and individually). Marx remarks on the severe shortages of resources and outright famine arising during the 1849 gold rush because social labor was so grotesquely allocated to producing gold and not enough labor allocated to producing non-gold commodities.