Re: The simple/elementary form of value . . .

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Charles Brown wrote,

>Though most of the book "value" is used. But "value" can be used to refer
>to "use-value" too.   Value in the sense of "wealth" is in the form of
>commodities, and commodities are bundles of exchange-value and use-value.

Remember, though, "A commodity appears at first sight an extremely
obvious, trivial thing . . . so far as it is a use-value there is nothing
mysterious about it . . . [j]ust as little does [this mystical character]
proceed from the nature of the determinants of value [the expenditure of
labour power] . . ."

"Whence, then, arises the enigmatic character of the product of labour, as
soon as it assumes the form of a commodity? . . . The mysterious character
of the commodity-form consists therefore simply in the fact that the
commodity *reflects* the social characteristics of men's own labour as
objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves, as the
socio-natural properties of these things."

Yes, then, exchange-value expresses value but it does so in an "inverted",
"mysterious" form -- as a relationship between things (e.g., linen and
coats) rather than as the relationship between people -- the weaver and
the tailor -- that it fundamentally is.

Elsewhere (e.g. in the Grundrisse and in the Critique of Political
Economy), Marx makes a fundamental distinction between "value", which is a
characteristic of the commodity form and "wealth", which is not. That
distinction is so crucial that I'll have to reserve comment on it until
I have a bit more time to elaborate.


Tom Walker
Sandwichman and Deconsultant
215-2273