[00:01] (compelling music)
[00:13] - So, we are starting back into Chapter 1.
[00:16] The first seven pages are
a kind of a bombshell.
[00:20] A lot is contained in them,
which will be unfolded later.
[00:25] I want to mention that
the first few chapters
[00:28] have a kind of hypothetical form,
[00:34] hypothetical situation.
[00:35] They take up simple commodity exchange
[00:38] under the capital system.
[00:39] That is, more or less,
[00:40] if I go to you and try
to sell you something
[00:42] and you come to me and try
to buy something from me.
[00:45] This is not possible outside
of the whole capital system,
[00:48] but he has to find a way in
[00:50] and he wanted to find a way
in that is familiar to you.
[00:53] I call this the entry point,
[00:54] and I still, even though it's difficult,
[00:56] don't think it's a bad way to start.
[00:58] The entry point into the capital system
[01:00] is through the commodity,
[01:02] and it's very narrow,
[01:04] and there's a lot of stuff
stuck in that entryway.
[01:09] So, keep your eye on
the reduced situations
[01:12] that Marx gives you,
[01:13] like simple commodity
exchange between individuals,
[01:18] exchanging particular commodities
[01:20] from particular concrete
acts of production.
[01:23] And when he talks about groups
[01:28] and phenomena in general,
[01:30] these are all different things
[01:31] that have to get worked
out in their own analysis
[01:33] because, ultimately,
[01:34] the only way you can understand
[01:36] any individual phenomena in this system
[01:37] is by starting from the whole.
[01:40] This is, of course, impossible to do.
[01:44] Maybe the critical of
capital can see the whole.
[01:49] Maybe Marx, after 30
years, could see the whole,
[01:52] but it might not be the case.
[01:55] He might not have gotten there.
[01:58] So the first four chapters
has this heuristic situation,
[02:03] simple individuals, concrete commodities,
[02:06] and moving from there
to the genesis of value
[02:11] and towards general questions
[02:12] and universal questions in this system.
[02:16] Anything universal, by the way,
[02:18] is historically bounded
to the capital system.
[02:20] It's universal, meaning it's necessary,
[02:22] and applies in every
situation under capital.
[02:25] That doesn't mean it's universal
in our historical moment
[02:29] only where capital is touching it
[02:31] because that is a quality
of the capital system
[02:33] that it universalizes
[02:35] and has moments of
absolute necessity in it.
[02:40] We'll talk more about
that as we go through.
[02:42] The guiding question
[02:44] for our reading of the
first four chapters is:
[02:45] What is value?
[02:49] Where does it come from?
[02:51] And what does it do?
[02:52] Those are the ways he works
out the what-is question
[02:56] because it has a source in the system
[02:59] and it is an operation.
[03:02] And also what is the apparatus
that value needs around it
[03:06] in order to continue to exist?
[03:10] It needs a system.
[03:11] It isn't something that
works just on its own.
[03:14] It calls into existence
a system around it.
[03:19] His technique is the
phenomenology of the commodity,
[03:23] this is the first four chapters,
[03:24] which I'm calling the entry point.
[03:28] It's the most familiar,
or at least he thought so,
[03:31] even more familiar in a
certain sense than labor,
[03:33] but he gets to labor right away.
[03:36] And it is...
[03:37] It's quite narrow
[03:39] and you can't totalize the
system from the commodity.
[03:42] So this is not a book about the commodity.
[03:44] This is a book about capital,
[03:45] and the way in is through the commodity.
[03:48] Does that make sense?
[03:49] Because as I said last time,
[03:50] capital is not an elemental theory,
[03:52] like chemistry, let's say.
[03:55] Although chemistry is beautiful
[03:56] because the compounds have
different emergent qualities
[03:59] than the elements.
[04:00] So you can't fully explain a
compound from its elements.
[04:03] And capital is the same.
[04:08] So, if you're in doubt,
[04:10] I know this sounds like
a salesman's trick,
[04:12] but if you're in doubt, read on.
[04:15] Things don't fully make sense
[04:16] from the perspective of the entry point.
[04:19] Like, you can't see a
house from the foyer.
[04:22] You need to go through the rooms first.
[04:24] You get a sense of the whole layout.
[04:25] And then, it will make sense
[04:27] what the foyer does in the house.
[04:28] It's an entry point.
[04:33] You will go through a set
of perspective switches.
[04:37] That's what Marx is gonna do for you
[04:38] and that's the phenomenological
aspect of this book.
[04:41] Phenomenology just means
the science of appearances
[04:44] or the way you experience things.
[04:47] Something always appears to someone else
[04:51] and it has another form that
is the way it doesn't appear.
[04:56] And in this phenomenology,
[04:58] you will be asked to switch perspectives.
[05:00] I'm just gonna give
you a little list here,
[05:01] from objects to processes,
[05:04] from things to ghostly
qualities that hang around them,
[05:09] from singles to doubles,
[05:13] and from elements to the whole.
[05:15] These are the perspectives,
[05:17] these are the perspective switches
[05:18] you're going to be asked to
accomplish as you read the book.
[05:22] So, it is a kind of
training for your psyche,
[05:25] for your perceptual apparatus,
[05:26] for your understanding apparatus.
[05:29] Today, we have an objective,
[05:31] which is part of our objective
is going to be to define use,
[05:36] use value exchange, exchange value,
[05:39] and the product of their
relationship, which is value.
[05:45] You're gonna be introduced to a new term,
[05:47] which is value form, it's a Marxian term,
[05:50] and it's very important
[05:52] for understanding how
the capital system works.
[05:57] Let's start with value.
[05:59] This is what the first
seven pages leap into
[06:02] and the first four chapters
try to define for you.
[06:05] You are witnessing the
birth of a fantasm value,
[06:09] but more than a fantasm,
a necessary fantasm,
[06:13] like freedom or democracy.
[06:15] But those belong to other systems.
[06:17] This is the fantasm that
belongs to the capital system.
[06:21] Value is a fantasm born out
of the lopsided relationship
[06:24] between use value and exchange value
[06:26] or between use and exchange.
[06:30] You're gonna hear how
it comes to be treated
[06:33] as an independent quasi-natural substance,
[06:36] something like a substance
in the philosophical sense.
[06:41] Value is a unique quality of things
[06:43] under the capital system.
[06:46] You'll see that Marx uses
an analogy of weight,
[06:48] like in a physical system.
[06:51] The capital system has this
unique quality called value.
[06:55] Value is the weight of the capital system.
[06:57] Value is the substance that you can read
[07:00] through things like...
[07:02] You can read weight in a physical system.
[07:08] And there's a whole set
of strange operations
[07:10] that the capital system uses
[07:12] that other social systems don't.
[07:14] Reflection,
[07:16] comparison, reduction, abstraction,
[07:19] reification, or objectification.
[07:22] These are all the processes
of the capital system.
[07:25] This is Marx's discovery.
[07:29] I'm gonna give you one definition of value
[07:31] and then we'll come back
to it a number of times.
[07:33] Value is a norm for comparing commodities
[07:36] in order to find the right
ratio in which to exchange them.
[07:42] Value is a norm for comparing commodities
[07:46] in order to find the right
ratio in which to exchange them.
[07:51] This doesn't quite get to the changes,
[07:54] the transformation of value,
in under the capital system.
[07:58] The way it compares commodities,
the way it comes to ratios,
[08:03] is gonna be different in capital
[08:04] than in simple non-capitalist exchange.
[08:08] But if you wanna know what value is
[08:10] in a non-capital setting,
[08:11] it is something like what you need
[08:14] when you're not producing
solely for yourself
[08:18] and you don't live in paradise.
[08:20] Or you could say if you don't live in hell
[08:22] where desire is 100%
and the supply is zero,
[08:28] and you don't live in paradise
[08:29] where desire is at zero
and supply is at 100%.
[08:35] You need value.
[08:37] Value is what allows
you to trade your thing
[08:39] for something else you
need with someone else.
[08:42] It's the way you decide how
many of your thing you're giving
[08:47] for how many of the other thing.
[08:50] Under the capital system,
[08:51] it isn't so much arrived at
according to desire or demand,
[08:57] even in that case.
[08:58] It's arrived at according to
reduction, hypothesization,
[09:05] equalization, expression,
[09:09] mirroring all of these weird processes
[09:12] that Marx is gonna lay out for us,
[09:14] as though the capital system
were really very different
[09:16] than any other social system
[09:17] because this processes were
totally different and abstract.
[09:25] Abstraction being one of the processes.
[09:29] So, about value,
[09:30] Marx is not saying there
is something like value,
[09:33] like there is a chair
in a room, we know this.
[09:37] He is saying, however,
[09:38] we act as though it's there
like a chair in a room.
[09:42] It gets objectified.
[09:44] It has what he calls ghostly objecthood.
[09:47] A great translation by the
new translator, Paul Reitter.
[09:50] It's true, ghostly objecthood.
[09:52] It's a kind of objecthood
that you can't touch
[09:55] and it can dissolve easily.
[09:57] It goes through a lot of transformations.
[10:00] Capital has its own ecology
and its own physics.
[10:06] So, on one hand, value
has a subjective side.
[10:08] We feel it to be there.
[10:10] If someone comes up to you and say,
[10:11] "I'll give you this
banana for your iPhone,"
[10:12] you're like, "But that's
not worth my iPhone."
[10:16] "How do you know?"
[10:17] "Well, I feel the value of this.
[10:18] I paid for it, or my parents paid for it,
[10:20] or the school paid for it, right?"
[10:22] You have a sense of its value,
but it's not only subjective,
[10:25] it is an objective need of the system
[10:27] for things to have value.
[10:32] So, one thing to keep in mind
[10:34] is you cannot do away with value
[10:36] just by feeling differently.
[10:40] Debunking value is not gonna help you
[10:42] with the capital system directly,
[10:45] although it will help you
make better decisions.
[10:47] If you all decided to
give away all your stuff
[10:49] as if it were valueless,
[10:51] you would end up with no stuff,
[10:53] but capital would go on happily,
[10:54] especially in the people
who got it, your stuff.
[10:58] Does that make sense?
[10:59] We'll track a little bit the difficulties
[11:01] in finding positions of
resistance to the capital system.
[11:06] Debunking or refusing it
doesn't seem to be enough.
[11:13] Okay, we're starting with value.
[11:19] And you'll see, if you open the book,
[11:25] we spent last time talking
about the vocabulary
[11:28] of the opening paragraph.
[11:33] He begins talking about
what he calls use value,
[11:36] which is, by the way,
[11:37] already something different than use.
[11:39] Value is only in play if
you don't have the thing
[11:43] or if you're not using it.
[11:44] Once you're using a thing,
[11:45] it has no value because you have it.
[11:49] Once you have a thing,
[11:50] it really doesn't have
the same kind of value.
[11:52] Value is only if it's
threatened to be taken away
[11:54] or you need to get it.
[11:56] Value is a kind of
teletechnology, a way...
[12:01] of relating to something that you need.
[12:05] That thing has value
insofar as you need it.
[12:08] That is the value insofar
as you need it for use,
[12:11] he calls a use value.
[12:14] This seems like the
easiest thing all around,
[12:17] although value makes use
already in a system of exchange.
[12:21] So really outside of an exchange system,
[12:23] there's no use value.
[12:24] Again, if you're in paradise,
[12:25] you don't need to exchange everything.
[12:27] Let's say all the smartphones
and all the updates
[12:30] are all lying around on the ground.
[12:32] They fell from the tree of smartphones.
[12:34] They don't have any value for you.
[12:37] So value again is part
of an exchange system.
[12:40] Samuel?
[12:42] - Can we have a personal sense of value?
[12:46] Like, just how much we
want something, right?
[12:49] If we're in paradise
[12:50] and all the updates are
lying on the ground,
[12:54] we might not need a sense of hierarchy.
[12:57] We might not need to hierarchize them,
[12:59] but we still couldn't do it, right?
[13:01] It's not...
[13:01] Doesn't seem like it's a product,
[13:02] it's a really straight system.
[13:05] - Well, it would be satisfied immediately.
[13:06] So, you wouldn't need value.
[13:09] Value is the delay of
that satisfaction, right?
[13:12] Value is what comes into play
[13:14] while you're waiting or
trying to get something
[13:17] that would be use value,
[13:18] insofar as it's valuable
to you because you need it.
[13:21] But if it's right there,
[13:23] there's no real value for
an infant until the feeder,
[13:28] whoever that is, says,
[13:30] "I'm tired, you're not gonna eat now."
[13:32] And you're like, "Wow, milk, valuable."
[13:37] Rudimentary value systems.
[13:41] Use values satisfy a human
want or need of whatever kind.
[13:45] They are multiple, they differ in quality,
[13:51] and Marx is not interested in this.
[13:53] So, if you're concerned about use things,
[13:56] like some people are, who live their life.
[13:58] You need a hammer, you
need to go get a hammer.
[14:00] Marx is not gonna talk about that.
[14:02] In the beginning,
[14:03] he is setting aside the spheres
he's not going to go into,
[14:07] and one of them is the infinite
world of useful things.
[14:12] Anything can become useful,
[14:14] and your tasks that you
use it for will change
[14:18] according to what you imagine,
[14:19] according to what someone
tells you you need,
[14:21] according to what confronts
you at any moment.
[14:27] This is on page 14.
[14:29] The usefulness of a thing
makes it into a use value.
[14:32] Again, I think it's a little
bit more complicated than that,
[14:36] but this is very important
[14:37] 'cause he's going to contrast
it with exchange value.
[14:40] Usefulness, in this sense,
[14:42] doesn't hover above us in the air.
[14:43] It's determined by the
properties of a commodity's body.
[14:49] Just so we know, that does
not have to be physical.
[14:53] It can be a word document.
[14:56] That's not physical; it has
a physical manifestation.
[14:59] It can be a dream if you're...
[15:02] Whatever you're doing with
that dream is useful to you,
[15:04] doing psychoanalysis,
[15:07] whatever those qualities are.
[15:08] It can be a service, which is
not a physical object, right?
[15:12] A service can be commodified.
[15:14] I sew your shirt for you,
let's say, your shirt is fine.
[15:19] Nice shirt, by the way.
[15:22] And you pay me for it, that
act has a delimited contours,
[15:30] you know when it starts,
you know when it's done,
[15:31] you know how long it takes.
[15:33] It has a use value to the shirt owner,
[15:37] and that is perfectly well commodifiable.
[15:39] There's no difference
[15:40] between physical commodities and services.
[15:44] So, if they tell you the service economy
[15:46] is fundamentally different,
[15:47] it is not fundamentally different.
[15:49] It certainly changes the way people live,
[15:51] what kind of concrete jobs you do.
[15:53] But in terms of value,
[15:54] the value moves around exactly the same.
[16:00] This is the province of what
he calls commodity studies,
[16:03] which I'm not sure exists,
[16:05] but that's not what he's gonna do.
[16:09] Okay, so use value is the property
[16:10] of being able to satisfy
a human want or need.
[16:15] It involves actually
doing this as a practice
[16:18] and activity use.
[16:22] So, we know that use value
is already abstracted.
[16:27] It's potential,
[16:30] it means it can be used;
[16:32] and it's abstracted in the sense
[16:34] that in any of the concrete situations
[16:37] in which you use something,
[16:38] this is called use.
[16:42] Value is realized, use
value is realized, when?
[16:45] When a thing is used, right?
[16:48] And the thing is, in a sense,
[16:50] has a use value used up
when you're done using it.
[16:53] You may actually use up the
usefulness of the thing, too,
[16:56] if it's, let's say, a banana.
[16:59] When you eat it, it's no longer useful.
[17:01] The peel is not useful.
[17:02] And incidentally, the
value body of a commodity,
[17:07] very different than the
use body of a commodity.
[17:10] Well, it's related to the
use body of the commodity.
[17:12] The peel is not really part of the value.
[17:14] Well, it is kind of,
[17:16] say it's part of the value in
that it protects the fruit.
[17:20] But there's many physical
qualities of a body
[17:22] that are not related to
the use or the exchange.
[17:26] So, for example, a banana can
be green, it can be yellow,
[17:29] it can be slightly brown, it
can be small, it can be big,
[17:32] it can be like cardboard,
it can be like sugar.
[17:37] And in all of those cases,
[17:38] in fact, the exchange value remains.
[17:42] What's required is that there's
the usable part is usable.
[17:48] Now, it could be that
cardboard bananas end up...
[17:52] You end up not buying that brand anymore.
[17:55] So, the usable,
[17:56] that is a quality that
relates to its use value.
[17:59] You have a question?
- Is it...
[18:00] Or what, like humans value (indistinct)?
[18:04] - Humans value this
particular thing socially.
[18:07] - Socially.
[18:08] - We'll talk a little
bit about what that is.
[18:12] The kinds of things that
have use values, again,
[18:14] are physical objects, services,
intellectual objects, media,
[18:20] processes like education or defense.
[18:23] They can all have use value.
[18:24] So, under capitalism,
[18:25] they can all have exchange
value potentially.
[18:29] There is a world of useful things here:
[18:31] food, energy, clothing, tools,
[18:33] we can think of many of
them that you could study.
[18:37] And think about a kind of
anthropology of human activities.
[18:43] Anthropology had to change
under capital, though,
[18:45] to be an anthropology of
the way human activities
[18:49] are used by the system to produce value.
[18:55] Let's talk about exchange value.
[18:59] So, we need to talk about...
[19:01] It's a very peculiar phenomenon.
[19:11] It seems like this is the
double in the commodity,
[19:14] use value and exchange value.
[19:16] But really, the double is this.
[19:20] That's the double
[19:21] 'cause exchange value
really only appears briefly.
[19:27] This is a longstanding
misunderstanding of the text,
[19:29] and Marx is not so clear about it.
[19:35] Exchange value is also
potential and abstract.
[19:40] Something has value
when it still has a use,
[19:46] but it has to be able to do
something else beyond its use
[19:49] in the capital system.
[19:51] So, again, exchange value
is not just a quality
[19:55] that resides in the thing,
[19:56] it's a quality that
tends toward an activity,
[19:59] a capitalist activity, which is exchange.
[20:01] Does that make sense?
[20:02] It doesn't just sit there, it happens,
[20:06] and it's called up when you're exchanging.
[20:09] - Would you mind explaining,
like, that (indistinct)?
[20:13] - Yeah, I'm gonna do
that in just a second.
[20:20] Value is potential use and exchange,
[20:22] but it is also a ghostly substance
[20:24] that persists through all changes of form
[20:29] in commodities and labor.
[20:31] Labor can go from being
reserve to being active.
[20:35] A commodity can go from being used,
[20:38] that is to say when it's
being worked in labor
[20:44] to being exchanged, to being
used, to being exchanged,
[20:47] to being totally consumed
and turning into waste.
[20:52] The value is conserved,
[20:53] even when something is totally consumed.
[20:55] Because if you eat food,
where does the value go?
[20:58] Yeah, you become the value,
[21:01] the value goes into you as a laborer.
[21:04] So, you will notice
[21:05] that value goes through
a set of transformations
[21:08] that is a circuit.
[21:09] As a closed circuit.
[21:11] It comes back around, you go
back to labor the next day,
[21:13] or you go back to your class
the next day with the energy.
[21:18] Again, energy and value seem to be
[21:22] in a kind of E equals mc
squared relationship here.
[21:25] They can neither be created
nor destroyed in this system.
[21:34] Value is potential use in exchange,
[21:35] but it's also a substance
[21:39] that changes form from material,
[21:41] to immaterial, to material, to immaterial,
[21:43] from commodity, to money, to commodity.
[21:46] That's one of Marx's
famous formula, C-M-C.
[21:49] And you can also use it the
other way around, M-C-M.
[21:52] Value is conserved.
[21:54] Love the conservation of value.
[21:58] The odd thing about the capital mode,
[22:00] which we're gonna get to the operation
[22:02] that this is all about,
[22:03] is that value is conserved and augmented.
[22:07] That's where the capital
system perverts physics.
[22:14] It doesn't, Marx will say,
[22:16] ultimately because you get
it out of the laborers.
[22:22] But it looks like it perverts physics.
[22:23] It looks like you put the
money into an investment
[22:26] and you get back 10% more, right?
[22:30] What's the rate now of return?
[22:32] I don't know, 7% more.
[22:33] To me, it's always like
going down in my mind.
[22:38] I guess it's the privilege of a Marxian
[22:42] to not really understand where
their investments are going.
[22:48] The oddity of this is that it
only becomes exchange value
[22:53] when it's not being used,
[22:58] and it only becomes use value
when it's not being exchanged.
[23:03] When it's being exchanged,
[23:04] it holds the use value in reserve.
[23:06] It depends on it, it can't go away.
[23:09] But it's not being exercised.
[23:10] So only one can be activated at a time,
[23:13] and this is what Marx
calls a contradiction.
[23:18] And we get back to the
question about doubles.
[23:23] Before we get to doubles,
[23:24] you can see here is a different world
[23:26] from the world of use values,
[23:28] it's a world of exchangeables.
[23:30] You could talk about what they are,
[23:31] but they're not the
same thing as use values
[23:33] 'cause things can be exchanged
[23:34] that have very little use value,
[23:36] like junk plastic toys that
you get in a goodie bag
[23:41] at a birthday party.
[23:43] Barely, you barely have any use value.
[23:45] The use value is like, "Oh, that's it."
[23:48] Then they go right in the garbage.
[23:50] It's a brilliant, it's a
stroke of genius plastic,
[23:55] and an evil.
[23:57] So here, you would plug in a picture.
[23:59] I'm so bad at PowerPoint,
[24:00] so you're just gonna have
to listen to this discourse
[24:04] because I was gonna, like,
[24:05] "Wouldn't it be nice to show
all the crazy commodities?"
[24:08] But,
[24:10] I'm not a visual guy.
[24:14] So, these doubles are in
attention with one another,
[24:18] which Marx sometimes
calls a contradiction,
[24:23] and a single thing like a commodity
[24:25] is a strange and strained
unity of contradictories.
[24:31] But we have to understand
what this relationship is.
[24:34] Obviously, use value and exchange value
[24:37] are not logical opposites.
[24:40] It is true that like Aristotle's
idea of a logical opposite,
[24:44] they cannot exist in the...
[24:45] They cannot be active in the same thing,
[24:47] in the same respect, at the same time.
[24:50] So, that's why he uses
this Aristotelian figure,
[24:52] logical figure contradiction.
[24:54] Does that make sense?
[24:56] Exchange value means it's not being used.
[24:59] Using means it's not being exchanged,
[25:01] but they have to both be in there.
[25:07] Now, you can make something
for use that isn't exchanged,
[25:10] but that's outside of the
capital system for him.
[25:12] You can make something for yourself
[25:15] or you can use something
that's not exchangeable
[25:17] because it's common to everybody.
[25:19] This is why the enclosure of the commons
[25:21] was very important for capital.
[25:23] If they start to enclose air and water
[25:26] more than they already do,
[25:27] they will become commodified, too.
[25:29] Water is already on the way,
[25:31] but air, so far, is not,
this is Marx's example.
[25:38] So obviously, they're not
opposites, they're just different.
[25:41] And they could be complementary
under some systems,
[25:44] but in this system, they're
antagonistic to one another.
[25:48] Exchange value and use value.
[25:49] Okay, I'm spending a bunch of time on this
[25:51] because these sorts of strange,
[25:55] and strained unities are
gonna come up over and over
[25:59] in the capital system.
[26:01] Yeah?
- Does Marx argue
[26:03] that these two concepts use exchange value
[26:06] exists within all systems of production?
[26:09] - Mm-mm.
[26:11] Nope.
[26:13] They don't.
[26:14] In any society bigger than one,
[26:17] you're likely to have use and exchange.
[26:21] But again, remember that
these terms, these concepts,
[26:26] this is a very important Marxian thought.
[26:28] It's a Hegelian thought,
[26:29] but Marx brings it back
to real living history.
[26:32] These terms are only necessary
[26:34] when society gets into a shape
where it needs those terms.
[26:38] So, again, if you're in paradise,
[26:40] you don't need the term
use or exchange because...
[26:44] Or think of an infant.
[26:45] You're just kind of eating,
[26:46] and pooping, and wandering around,
[26:48] and you don't have to
distinguish your activities
[26:52] because you're never
in a situation of lack.
[26:57] Yeah.
[26:58] - And (indistinct) is about
the idea of work (indistinct)
[27:02] being somewhat separate from the strength,
[27:04] in the sense that like our commodities
[27:07] are still part of us,
[27:08] like many people have through
commodities or art occlusion,
[27:12] then this is the cell.
[27:14] (indistinct)
[27:17] - Well, humans separate from the system
[27:20] is gonna be hard to justify as we go on.
[27:25] So, let's just...
[27:25] Let's take the system in itself.
[27:27] It feels a little bit cold and distant,
[27:29] but Marx will argue that humans
[27:31] are in service of commodities,
[27:33] and that's the big difference.
[27:35] So, it's dehumanizing, for sure.
[27:41] So, let's hold that question. Yeah.
[27:43] - Marx says that something is a use value
[27:46] or is exchange value.
[27:47] Why does he say is
relevant, has this value,
[27:50] or have a value?
- Uh-huh.
[27:52] That's a great question.
[27:54] Did you hear that question?
[27:55] Marx says that things are use values
[27:58] and are exchange values,
[27:59] not that they have them.
[28:01] Because that is the being of the thing.
[28:03] The being of the thing is not
some independent, God-given,
[28:08] or nature-given set of qualities.
[28:12] When in a social setting,
[28:13] which is all we're talking about here,
[28:15] you have a thing for use,
its qualities are the thing.
[28:20] When you encounter a hammer,
you could have an aesthetic,
[28:25] now we're getting into the
precincts of German philosophy.
[28:28] You could have an aesthetic
relationship to that hammer
[28:31] and be like, "What a beautiful hammer."
[28:33] But let's put that aside for now.
[28:35] I think that's fairly artificial.
[28:39] The hammer is weight, shape,
[28:43] the useful qualities for hammering a nail.
[28:47] And you don't really
see a hammer otherwise,
[28:49] unless you go to the
market, or Home Depot,
[28:53] and you're like, "How much
does this hammer cost?"
[28:57] And you're negotiating between cost
[28:58] and the kinds of qualities
[28:59] that will get your particular job done.
[29:01] So for him, things are double,
[29:04] so much so that you have
a double consciousness.
[29:07] The double consciousness is,
[29:09] "Oh, my gosh, I can get
$5 for this hammer."
[29:11] Or, "Oh, my gosh,
[29:12] I can hammer in 20 nails
with this hammer in today.
[29:16] I can hammer just the kind of nail in
[29:18] that will hang my picture
or frame my barn."
[29:22] Does that make sense?
[29:22] And the thing is only that.
[29:26] There's nothing subsisting
outside of the capital system
[29:29] that is a thing in itself.
[29:33] Yeah.
[29:37] - So, if, like...
[29:40] Just like on the point
on like the contradiction
[29:42] between something having use value
[29:45] and exchange value at the same
time, like surely that's...
[29:50] I'm just not sure why like
they're applying to...
[29:53] Or those two concepts can
apply to like the same object
[29:56] because surely, like,
say I have like an apple,
[30:00] but that presents use value
or that has use value,
[30:03] insofar as the apple is
like an object of mine,
[30:06] desire to eat the apple.
[30:07] So, it's like a property of the apple.
[30:11] But then like the exchange
value is, surely then, not...
[30:16] It's not just like a
property of the apple,
[30:18] it's like a relation between the apple
[30:21] and say, like, an arm.
[30:22] So it's not like-
- Well, both in that case...
[30:24] It's a good question.
[30:25] In both of those cases,
the apple has a use value
[30:28] and the apple has an exchange value.
[30:30] They are relational
characteristics of the apple.
[30:34] The apple is useful to you.
[30:37] So apples in themselves
belong to, I don't know,
[30:41] some alien observer from
an asteroid passing by.
[30:44] They're like, "Apple."
[30:47] But they wouldn't point it out
[30:48] because it's of no use to
them one way or the other.
[30:52] So, both are social qualities.
[30:54] That is to say they are
related to you as a desirer,
[30:59] and you desire apples
because in your culture,
[31:01] apples are things that get eaten,
[31:03] as opposed to using them
[31:05] to build a house or something like that.
[31:07] So there are two different
kinds of social characteristics,
[31:12] and you can tell immediately
[31:15] that these two things go together
[31:17] in a strange and strained way.
[31:19] They're always both there.
[31:22] One comes forward in exchange
and one comes forward in use.
[31:27] When you go to the supermarket,
[31:28] if you just shove your
face into the apple,
[31:30] someone's gonna be like,
[31:31] "Wait, this is an exchange
place, we're not doing that here.
[31:35] You take that out, you pay for it, right?"
[31:38] And you always feel bad
when you eat the apple
[31:40] and then you're gonna pay
for it up at the register.
[31:42] Like, "I was just so hungry."
[31:44] (Paul laughing)
[31:45] In fact, it has to be an
exchange first under capital.
[31:51] Just like you give your labor
first before you get paid,
[31:55] the thing is exchange,
[31:56] and Marx is going to show
[31:57] that not only are these things
strange and strained doubles,
[32:02] but they are reversed from
what you imagine them to be
[32:05] in your humanistic way of thinking
[32:09] and from what they are in other systems.
[32:13] You don't look convinced,
but let's keep going.
[32:15] We have a lot to get through
and we barely started.
[32:18] (Paul clears throat)
[32:22] Okay, what we know about
things as use values, right?
[32:26] The thing is a use value.
[32:28] It's a use value
[32:29] because someone put concrete
characteristics in it
[32:31] through their concrete labor, right?
[32:35] Somebody put the
characteristics into an apple.
[32:38] They're not just born there.
[32:39] They've been refining
these trees for years,
[32:42] for decades, for centuries.
[32:44] And putting in the fertilizer
and putting in the work,
[32:47] and picking them right,
and polishing them,
[32:49] and all that kind of stuff.
[32:52] A skilled person uses
qualitatively specific activities
[32:56] to make something that
satisfies a human want or need.
[33:00] This is called production, by the way.
[33:03] This is called product production.
[33:07] At a later point, a thing
gets taken for exchange.
[33:11] Temporally, production of a use value
[33:15] comes before production
of an exchange value.
[33:17] But logically, in the capital system,
[33:19] production of exchange value
[33:21] comes before production of use value.
[33:25] The way the contradictions
can exist in capital
[33:28] is that they get spread out in time,
[33:31] they get unfolded in time.
[33:35] And we will talk about
why exchange comes first.
[33:38] Again, in a capital system,
[33:41] commodities are things that
are produced for exchange.
[33:44] So, before they get
thought of as use values,
[33:48] no, that's not exactly right.
[33:50] They're both thought of as use values
[33:51] and exchange values at the same time.
[33:54] But exchange is the original
impetus for producing them
[33:59] in a capital system.
[34:02] Okay.
[34:08] I think we're doing good.
[34:09] You are totally confused.
[34:25] Let's take a look at page 15 to 16.
[34:31] Here.
[34:34] At the very bottom of 15, as use values,
[34:37] commodities differ above all,
[34:40] with respect to quality.
[34:42] As exchange values,
[34:43] they can differ only
with respect to quantity,
[34:46] and they contain not even
an atom of use value.
[34:49] That's why these are so peculiar, Samuel.
[34:52] - It seems that this taking
exchange values to be constant,
[35:00] which is what he says at the top of that.
[35:02] And at the bottom,
[35:03] he said they're for only
relative (indistinct).
[35:08] Can't an object have exchange
values to each person?
[35:12] - Not to each person,
but to each commodity.
[35:16] Exchange values do not have
any relations to people
[35:20] until they have relations
to other commodities.
[35:23] - So it could have simultaneously, say,
[35:26] Saraiya is willing to pay the
victim bananas for an iPhone
[35:29] and I'm willing to pay,
[35:29] to exchange 10 bananas for an iPhone.
[35:32] - Unrelated to what you're willing to pay.
[35:34] It's only related to what
socially a thing is worth
[35:39] compared to other commodities.
[35:44] - We're not talking about price
as we know it around that.
[35:46] - We're not talking about price,
[35:49] we're talking about value and
the way value gets set up.
[35:52] The way you know that value
and price are different
[35:55] is that if something is
trading for above its value,
[36:00] people invest in that.
[36:02] And if something is trading
for below its value,
[36:04] people don't invest in that.
[36:06] And in fact, those firms
can go out of business
[36:09] because they're not
making back what they need
[36:11] to make back to cover their costs
[36:12] and to prepare for the
following year, et cetera.
[36:16] So, price and value are
absolutely different.
[36:20] The relationship between value and price
[36:22] is a controversial topic
in Marxian studies.
[36:27] It goes back to the infamous cliche,
[36:30] the transformation problem.
[36:33] And I don't think it's
worth talking about here
[36:35] because we are interested
[36:36] in the social outcome of abstraction,
[36:42] and we have to get there.
[36:46] For those people who try
to make economics work out
[36:49] so they can predict what prices will be,
[36:52] it's a question of the
relation of value to price,
[36:55] and different economic theories
[36:57] settle this question in different ways.
[36:59] And Marx was famously unable to settle it,
[37:02] but it doesn't touch the basic insight,
[37:05] which is that exchange value,
value, rules our lives,
[37:12] determines the quality of our labor,
[37:15] determines the amount
of leisure time we have,
[37:17] determines the way we
relate to one another.
[37:24] Yeah.
[37:24] - Can you think of price and value
[37:27] as kind of one of those weird doubles,
[37:30] where one losing into the other, right?
[37:32] You question kind of like
why a price is this way
[37:36] and that's the phenomenology of it.
[37:38] And then, (indistinct).
[37:41] - There's a lot to be said about price.
[37:43] Maybe we set aside,
[37:44] once we understand these
things down the line,
[37:46] half of a session to talk about price.
[37:49] It's worth thinking about Adam Smith
[37:52] and David Ricardo who
thought about this a lot.
[37:54] And they also recognized
[37:56] that one thing that's
characteristic of prices,
[37:59] which is not characteristic of value,
[38:01] is that they fluctuate wildly
day to day, minute to minute.
[38:07] But they fluctuate around a center,
[38:09] Smith called this a natural
price, around a center,
[38:13] which is thought to be
something like the value
[38:15] is not gonna get too crazy.
[38:17] Like, you will never have an
iPhone selling for 25 cents.
[38:22] And you can see when
you compare commodities,
[38:25] that value is real.
[38:27] You see, you might have a
banana selling for 25 cents,
[38:29] you'll never have it selling for $1,000,
[38:31] unless things go really haywire.
[38:35] And the opposite is also true.
[38:37] You'll never trade a banana for an iPhone.
[38:41] Yeah.
[38:43] - So, you said that use value
strictly relates to quality.
[38:46] Is it the quality of the total actions
[38:49] that encourage people
to use that commodity?
[38:53] - Let's look at the sentence again.
[38:54] I love it when we do philological work.
[38:57] As use values,
[38:58] commodities differ above
all with respect to quality,
[39:01] that is in their qualities.
[39:04] So that as a banana is peelable
[39:05] and an iPhone is not peelable, et cetera.
[39:11] A banana is nutritious,
[39:12] and this is what Marx is thinking of.
[39:14] In one sense, he has a kind
of Spinozistic ontology.
[39:18] Things have qualities.
[39:20] Yeah.
[39:20] - So there's a lot of different
value terms going around.
[39:26] And sometimes,
[39:27] I'll hear you talk about, say,
exchange value or use value,
[39:30] and then you'll just dive into the topic
[39:33] with the shorthand of value.
[39:35] Just for my comprehension going-
[39:37] - Oh, yeah.
- Or whenever you say value,
[39:39] maybe with a capital V,
[39:41] are you talking about that sort of value
[39:44] that's derived from abstract labor?
[39:53] - Use value, you understand it,
[39:55] is something that corresponds
to your wants and needs.
[40:00] Exchange value, you understand it,
[40:02] is how much you can get for your thing,
[40:06] how much you can get by exchanging it.
[40:08] So, he uses coats and linen.
[40:10] It's 19th century, it's
Germany or he was in London.
[40:15] It's cold, you need a coat.
[40:17] The coats are not made of linen.
[40:19] For a long time, I was confused by that.
[40:21] Coats are wool, the linen
is a separate thing.
[40:24] It's like we have these
things that are different,
[40:26] and he is very clear.
[40:27] You can't exchange linen for linen.
[40:29] The same amount of linen for
the same amount of linen.
[40:31] This is how you know
there's something like value
[40:34] and how it's parasitic on use value
[40:37] because you already have the linen.
[40:39] If you have it, you don't
need it unless you need more.
[40:42] But then you'd have to
exchange something else, right?
[40:45] There is no market of exchanging
the same for the same.
[40:47] You need to exchange things
with different qualities.
[40:50] One second.
[40:52] So, use value as a kind of
basis is a sufficient...
[40:56] Is a necessary, but not sufficient,
[41:00] characteristic of a commodity.
[41:01] It must have the use value
[41:03] 'cause no one will buy it otherwise.
[41:05] But when it comes to exchanging,
[41:06] it only matters how much it
exchanges for of another thing.
[41:12] Out of these two comes a phantom.
[41:21] Because when you exchange
it for something else,
[41:24] you think it has this
thing intrinsic to it
[41:27] that is of value.
[41:29] The value appears in the thing
[41:31] as something it seems to carry with it
[41:33] and have with it everywhere it goes.
[41:36] So, value as a product
[41:38] is the unity of exchange
value and use value.
[41:43] You say that is worth X, Y, and Z
[41:47] because it has this ghostly
quality that adheres to it.
[41:53] You could say, if you want,
[41:55] that this is the antithesis
and this is the synthesis,
[41:58] but Marx is not so clear about that, okay?
[42:02] He will not talk about exchange value
[42:04] as a separate and
interesting thing after this.
[42:06] He's just gonna talk
about use value and value
[42:09] because it's value that will
end up making capital work.
[42:15] Value is...
[42:19] based in use value and
realized in exchange value,
[42:23] and it looks like an independent thing
[42:26] that you could trade on a market.
[42:28] And it comes to be represented
through one of the processes,
[42:33] representation, or expression
of capital in what form?
[42:40] Value is represented
independently as money.
[42:43] It's as though you took
it out of the thing
[42:46] and value started living on its own.
[42:49] And I said, "I'll give you this money,
[42:50] which is equal in value
to what you're having
[42:52] because that thing has
intrinsically, in it, value."
[42:55] Does that make sense?
[42:58] - There were some questions.
[43:03] - Yeah.
[43:04] - So this value,
[43:05] because I think you
mentioned that this so thing
[43:08] of you starting it...
[43:10] (indistinct)
[43:15] - Ultimately, we'll talk about value,
[43:16] but this is the genesis of value.
[43:19] You have something that's
useful, socially useful.
[43:22] People use it in our culture, right?
[43:24] Something that's totally outside
[43:27] of what other people recognize as useful
[43:30] might be useful to you individually,
[43:32] but it doesn't have a use value.
[43:35] And you have exchange value,
[43:36] which is what you get for it on a market
[43:42] related to an equivalent.
[43:44] And these two together
[43:46] make it seem as though
there's this special substance
[43:50] that adheres to all commodities,
[43:52] just in different quantities.
[43:57] And it's not purely
psychological, it is ontological.
[44:01] You live in a world as
though this was real.
[44:04] And so it's real.
[44:06] Value is real under capital.
[44:10] As I say, give away all your things,
[44:12] and you'll just have no things.
[44:14] But value will go on happily.
[44:15] And if you wanna get them back,
[44:17] you'll have to concede
the reality of value.
[44:23] Okay.
[44:25] Wow, you're really pushing me.
[44:27] This is good.
[44:30] What else do we need to talk about?
[44:31] We need to talk about the
double character of labor.
[44:33] So,
[44:35] actually, a commodity has
this double character,
[44:38] use value and value,
[44:46] and labor has a double...
[44:49] double character, too.
[44:59] Useful labor makes useful things.
[45:02] That is a qualitative act that
requires skill and knowledge.
[45:07] As machines tape go over that,
[45:10] you can put less skill into it,
[45:14] but nonetheless it requires some skill.
[45:19] From the perspective of a useful object,
[45:21] labor is useful labor.
[45:24] So, the question is:
[45:25] What is labor from the
perspective of value?
[45:29] It is a bare gelatinous blob.
[45:32] Don't you love this translation?
[45:34] It's a translation by
a writer whom I admire
[45:37] of a German word gallerte,
[45:39] which is something like sue it.
[45:41] It's when you took
everything that was left over
[45:43] and you boiled it down
into a gelatinous blob.
[45:48] We thought of using sue it,
[45:49] but we didn't think anyone
would know really what that was.
[45:52] So we put a bare gelatinous blob.
[45:54] It's everything kind of mixed together
[45:55] until all of its qualitative
characteristics disappear
[45:59] and you just have a kind
of quantity of stuff.
[46:03] That's the second characteristic of labor,
[46:06] which he calls abstract labor.
[46:09] So you have concrete labor
[46:14] and abstract labor.
[46:18] Clearly, abstract labor makes value
[46:20] and concrete labor makes use values.
[46:25] In capital,
[46:31] these get inverted so that
you do concrete labor,
[46:37] so that you can get abstract labor
[46:39] and you'd make useful things,
[46:40] so that you can get value out of it.
[46:45] I'm jumping ahead.
[46:46] That's like the climax
of the first project.
[46:50] We will go from commodity production
[46:52] or production of products
to production of value.
[46:56] Commodity production
to production of value.
[47:01] You don't get the second type of labor
[47:04] from concrete differentiated labor.
[47:07] If you look at the world of useful things,
[47:10] you see all these different qualities.
[47:12] They're edible, they're
sweet, they're sour,
[47:15] they're tools to make other
things, they're entertainment.
[47:18] Whatever it does for you, it does for you.
[47:21] The same thing with the
labor that goes into it,
[47:22] it's absolutely an infinite,
[47:25] potentially infinitely differentiated.
[47:28] That's why if someone plays the trumpet
[47:30] and I play the guitar,
[47:32] that doesn't mean I can play the trumpet
[47:34] and they can play the guitar.
[47:34] Although musicians are pretty good
[47:36] at different things like that, right?
[47:38] But this divides us as people.
[47:39] So we have a social division
of labor, as Marx calls it.
[47:44] But when it comes down to the
labor that makes up value,
[47:48] it is undifferentiated, homogenized,
[47:51] reduced to one particular quality,
[47:54] which is, according to Marx,
how long it took to do.
[47:58] How long it took to do
according to the average
[48:01] that it takes to do that in the society.
[48:08] Okay, let's say a couple of other things.
[48:10] We need like a four-hour lecture,
[48:12] but you're probably happy
you don't have that.
[48:16] Let's talk about socially
necessary average labor time.
[48:22] Socially necessary average labor time
[48:24] is what distinguishes
Marxist theory of value
[48:27] from Ricardo's theory of value
or Smith's theory of value.
[48:32] Value is not just what
the worker put into it
[48:34] in producing a useful product.
[48:40] Value goes through this
homogenizing process,
[48:44] and you can tell the magnitude of value
[48:50] by the socially necessary
average labor time
[48:53] that went into it.
[48:55] Because labor goes through
its homogenizing process, too.
[48:59] And you are being compared
[49:00] to everyone else on the labor market,
[49:02] so that when you go to
work, they don't say,
[49:04] "Take your time, you do it in five days.
[49:07] Do it in five days."
[49:09] No, they say, "Well, the
average for this is two hours,
[49:12] so you've got two hours to do this."
[49:14] If not, (Paul mimicking air whooshing)
[49:15] you're out.
[49:17] Right?
[49:19] This is the way it
works 'cause if one firm
[49:21] is working much more
slowly than another firm,
[49:24] they won't last very long.
[49:26] Here is where competitive
pressures come in.
[49:28] You don't actually get those
very much in this volume.
[49:31] You get them much more in Volume 3.
[49:33] But you have to keep in mind
[49:34] that we're looking for the whole system.
[49:36] So ultimately, competitive pressures
[49:39] push these things in a
particular direction.
[49:41] We'll see this a bit later in this book.
[49:44] Socially necessary labor time.
[49:46] The labor time necessary in this society
[49:48] to make a certain thing.
[49:50] Marx is gonna use the prefix social a lot.
[49:53] What does social mean?
[49:54] It has three opposites:
natural, individual, and ideal.
[50:01] In this way,
[50:02] he gets rid of a kind of
by a logistic anthropology.
[50:06] He gets rid of the Hegelian
[50:09] or liberal concentration on an individual,
[50:12] and he gets rid of German idealism.
[50:15] Social is not natural.
[50:17] It means something that was made,
[50:21] something historically
specific to a given society
[50:25] to a certain way of living,
[50:27] which has institutions,
[50:29] although he will say often
[50:31] that the social is
natural for human beings.
[50:35] Don't be confused.
[50:36] The social is quite different than nature.
[50:38] Although Marx understood that
nature had its own history,
[50:42] at that time, he read
the "Origin of Species"
[50:45] and was really keen about it.
[50:49] The social is its own category.
[50:52] It also means not individual,
[50:54] that is, it's something that
applies to the whole society
[51:00] and emerges from the
interactions of individuals,
[51:06] the individuals in the largest collective
[51:08] that shares a way of living.
[51:11] And social is also not ideal,
[51:13] that is to say it's not a prescription
[51:16] or a description of some abstract truth,
[51:19] but a set of practices.
[51:23] Practices that make sense for a group
[51:25] under certain pressures.
[51:28] A group whose members are
completely interdependent,
[51:33] for whom an individual is a falsification
[51:37] of their real way of living
[51:39] because they collaborate on everything
[51:43] through a division of labor.
[51:47] Social or societal names,
[51:49] the interdependent group
that cannot be reduced
[51:51] to an individual free will,
[51:53] to individual inclinations,
or individual drives.
[51:57] So, the social is a ground zero
[51:58] for all of Marx's reflection.
[52:00] That's what makes him useful
[52:02] and the course is called
Foundations of Social Thought.
[52:05] Yeah, Samuel.
[52:08] - Yeah, Marx is living in a Kingdom.
[52:10] They are true, right?
[52:12] Like, living in pressure,
right, which he was-
[52:13] - Well, he is living
in London at this time.
[52:16] - But he dropped in
(indistinct), which is a kingdom.
[52:18] And arguably, a lot of societal pressures
[52:22] are coming from the whims of
the leader of that society.
[52:26] But how do we work that?
[52:28] - Well, he is not talking
about political forms
[52:33] or government.
[52:34] He is talking about the way people
[52:37] have to collaborate on their social life
[52:42] to make their means of subsistence,
[52:44] which he saw as quite independent
[52:46] of the whims of the Prussian leaders,
[52:49] although they could infringe on it.
[52:53] But people tended to do that on their own,
[52:56] they could benefit from it,
[52:57] but the people tended to
do that on their own, yeah.
[53:00] - What is he describing as society?
[53:02] Is it particularly London
Revolution or IWA Society?
[53:07] - Capitalist Society.
[53:09] Society under the domination of capital.
[53:15] Okay, we're coming up
to the end of our time.
[53:19] Let me see if there's any questions.
[53:21] We're crawling along, but it's
gonna get faster, I promise.
[53:29] (indistinct)
[53:31] - So, capitalism is
neither a political system
[53:34] nor (indistinct) for a social sector?
[53:38] And the key, does he need practical?
[53:42] - Oh, yeah, the last chapter
is about colonialism.
[53:44] Uh-huh, he links it to colonialism
[53:46] and the types of colonial-type
activities in Europe
[53:53] in which people were
dispossessed of their land
[53:56] and forced into factories.
[54:00] Yeah.
[54:02] Very loud.
[54:03] - This might be too big a question to ask,
[54:04] and we're at the end,
[54:05] but how much of the rest
of Marx's economic analysis
[54:09] depends on his labor theory of value?
[54:13] - He does not have a
labor theory of value.
[54:15] He has an abstraction theory of value
[54:18] or something people have
called a value theory of labor.
[54:24] I think it's a good turn
[54:25] because he's really interested
[54:26] in what being forced to produce
value first does to labor.
[54:31] He is not interested
[54:33] in working out how we can
get the most out of a market.
[54:37] And so his goal is very different
[54:38] than mainstream economists.
[54:42] But, we can talk more about that.
[54:44] It's the last minute where a
bone of contention has come up.
[54:48] Other questions before we cut?
[54:51] Yeah.
[54:52] - (indistinct) together, like
exchange value, used value,
[54:57] and how value is
determined by (indistinct)?
[55:04] - The only thing about value
that's determined by...
[55:06] Value is determined by exchange,
[55:09] and its magnitude is determined
by the abstraction of labor
[55:13] such that those things become comparable.
[55:16] It's complicated.
[55:17] He says, "When you take all these things
[55:19] of totally different
qualitative characteristics
[55:22] that are used for totally different things
[55:24] by different people,
[55:25] incidentally, not everyone
wants a hammer, right?"
[55:29] We are not philosophizing with a hammer,
[55:31] we're philosophizing with a MacBook.
[55:37] How do they become comparable?
[55:39] They become comparable through exchange.
[55:42] Where do they get their magnitude?
[55:44] They get their magnitude
[55:45] from the socially necessary
average labor time used in them
[55:48] because that's the only thing
[55:49] that differentiates different commodities
[55:52] in their magnitude of value.
[55:53] Says Marx.
[55:55] Not the only way to look at
it, but it's fairly logical.
[55:58] The only thing that's
different between a banana,
[56:01] aside from its qualitative
characteristics,
[56:03] and an iPhone is how much
average labor it takes
[56:07] to go into it.
[56:09] Does that make sense?
[56:11] For Marx.
[56:14] See you next time.
[56:16] (uplifting music)