Why does Marx begin his book with the analysis of the commodity? What is
the "double-character of the commodity? (Recall Aristotle's distinction
between use value and exchange value). Is use value a specific
social form of wealth? Is exchange-value? Is the commodity?
Do all use values have value? Do all products of human labor have value? What is the significance of Marx's statement: "Nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labor does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value" (260).
How does Marx argue that "exchange value, generally, is only the mode of expression, the phenomenal form, of something contained in it, yet distinguishable from it" (257). What is this common "something"? What does Marx call it? Why can it not be any "natural property" (257) of commodities?
Marx argues that just as the commodity has a "double character" the labor that produces commodities has a "double character." In fact, Marx prides himself on discovering this point and he calls it "the pivot on which a clear comprehension of political economy turns" (260). What is it and why is it so important?
What sort of labor is it that all commodities have in common? What is the significance of Marx's calling the substance that all commodities have in common, namely value, a "social" (258) substance, and "the same unsubstantial reality in each" (258)? Note Marx's statement "exchange value is the only form in which the value of commodities can manifest itself or be expressed" (258). Why is that? Why can't value be expressed and measured directly?
How can it be that labor is the only source of value according to Marx but not the only source of wealth? "Labour is not the only source of material wealth, of use-values produced by labour. As William Petty puts it, labour is its father and the earth its mother" (261).
In claiming that labor is the only common property of commodities, isn't Marx forgetting the utility of commodities, the simple fact that commodities are desired by people? Isn't that at least as much a common feature of commodities as is labor? (Try putting a lot of work into and selling something that no one wants). Yet, might we find Marx anticipating and answering these objections in other passages: "The utility of a thing makes it a use-value. But this utility is not a thing of air. Being limited by the physical properties of the commodity, it has no existence apart from that commodity. ... This property of a commodity is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities" (256); "if the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it" (260).
What does the following sentence suggest about a commercial society: "But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use-value" (257)? Surely use-value does matter in individual exchanges-though one wonders what's going on when people "go shopping"-but Marx seems to be talking about the social practice of generalized commodity exchange. What purpose is served by that collective practice if it has nothing to do with use-value? Is it possible, on the other hand, that (contrary to Marx's supposition) there is after all a component of use-value in exchanges but that such use-value is just as bound in a social form as exchange value? Is usefulness or utility then also a social form like the commodity, capital, wage-labour, etc.? What determines it? How does it relate to or is is factored into exchange value?
Marx reasons that value-producing labor is "socially necessary" labor. If the average productivity in a branch of industry doubles, does that mean that twice as much value will be produced during each working hour? Will twice as many products represent twice as much value? What should happen to prices (as expressions of exchange value) in response to such changes? Is that what actually happens?
What is so significant about the following pair of observations: "An increase in the quantity of use-values is an increase of material wealth. Nevertheless, an increased quantity of material wealth may correspond to a simultaneous fall in the magnitude of its value" (263)? Consider the possible consequences of such a development for consumers and for the environment. Is the purpose of a capitalist firm to increase the quantity of material wealth or to increase the amount of value that returns to it (profits, interest)?
What conditions the productivity of labor? If Marx's analysis is correct, what should we expect from the ever increasing productivity brought about by technology? What would eventually be the role of labour in the productive process? What would eventually be the share of the product apportioned to labourers? In such circumstances, do labourers have an incentive to increase their productivity? What does this imply in reference to Marx's theory of value which is determined by labour? Is he correct in suggesting that labour is a necessary condition of life, "an eternal nature-imposed necessity," "independent of all forms of society" (261)? Under certain conditions of production, is it possible to imagine value which is completely independent of human labour? What would determine value in such circumstances?
How does Marx's conception of labor, wealth, and value compare to Locke's? What does the statement "Nature has no more to do with it [exchange value], than it has in fixing the course of exchange" (281) suggest in this respect?
What role does a labour theory value play in traditional economics? By supposing that the magnitude of value derives from labor time, what becomes a necessary condition for labourers having any access to a share of the goods produced in the economy? Can the size of that share change? How? Do increases in productivity result in larger shares of the product for labourers? Why does Marx seem to adhere to such theories? Is his critique of capitalism in some way tainted by the influence of invisible capitalist social forms? What aspects of his thinking seem thus affected?
How has Marx shown that a commodity is "a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties" (274). From what, according to Marx, does this "mystical character of commodities" (274) arise? What does it not arise from? Why is the commodity "a mysterious thing" (274)?
Is commodity-producing labor alienated labor? Why does Marx think that to understand commodity production that he must "have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world" (275)? Why is Christianity, with its "cultus of abstract man" (280), and Protestant Christianity in particular, the most fitting religion for a capitalist society, according to Marx?
Is the fetishism of commodities necessarily the most significant such fetishizing in the context of late twentieth-century commercial societies? Are commodities really all that exciting to us? (think about James Harthouse). What may be even more fetishized than commodities? What is the real object of our reverence and awe (our God so to speak)?
What is significant in Marx's noting of an analogy between the functions of language and the fetishizing of commodities? What does that suggest concerning words (and implicit social forms) such as "money," "capital," "labour," "productiveness," etc.? Are such terms in need of defetishizing and deciphering? What may lie under the wraps of such language? Where should the analysis stop? Is Marx's own discovery of certain forms of labour underlying value in need of further analysis? How about "technology"? Has it become a fetishized concept in our own times? What processes underlie and explain the seemingly magical powers of technology?
Mill seemed to assume that ordinary commercial exchanges were private matters concerning only the parties involved in the exchanges. How is Marx challenging-and at the same time, perhaps, explaining--that assumption when he writes that money "conceals, instead of disclosing, the social character of private labor, and the social relations between the individual producers" (277)?
How are the production of commodities and the division of labor related according to Marx (261)? Compare this to Smith's account.
What is revealing and what is problematic in the fiction of Robinson Crusoe's one-man economy and self-sufficiency (278)? What role do such fictions play in the arguments of traditional economists?
What strikes Marx as so different about the feudal conditions of the European middle ages in comparison with the capitalist mode of production? How would production by a "community of free individuals" (279) differ from capitalist production?
In Chinua Achebe's great novel Things Fall Apart, things fall apart in a traditional African village with the arrival of the Christian colonizers. Marx (see p. 280) sees the rise of commercial societies as premised on the dissolution of traditional societies. But, like Schiller, he seems to be saying that traditional forms of human society are either immature or based on personal domination and in either case are destined to fall apart. Is this a piece of "Eurocentrism" on Marx's part? Is Marx agreeing with Hume and Smith that the rise of modern commercial societies represents a great leap forward in human history, though, unlike Hume and Smith, not the final step toward human liberation?
How and when does capital come into being according to Marx? What are its historical origins? What practices underlie and give rise to the form of capital? What is the first concrete form which capital assumes?
What different models of commodity circulation does Marx indentify? How do they differ? What are their aims?
How are the two different commodity circulation models related to the issues of use value and exchange value? How do the end products of the the two circulation processes differ? How do those end products differ with reference to their starting points?
In the C-M-C model, can the second C be larger (in terms of exchange value) than the first? Under what circumstances would that be possible? How do Marx's dismissal of such cases relate to Aquinas's ideas on buying and selling?
What are the peculiar features of the M-C-M process? How does the second M (or M')come to be larger than the first? What is Marx's term for the difference between M and M'? What creates it? Following the logic of the C-M-C case, what must then be true about the process by which M' comes to exceed M? In the last analysis, what does the form M-C-M' boil down to? Are there substantial differences in the cases of merchant, industrial, and financial capital?
How does Marx incorporate Aristotle's ideas on household management vs money making (and their respective goals) into his own distinction between different commodity circulation models? How does he employ Aristotle's notions of boundless vs limited accumulation of wealth? According to Marx, what is the difference between a miser and a capitalist?
Why does Marx suggest that the commodity is the "disguised" mode of the existence of value (286)? What does the commodity form conceal? Is money also a disguised form of value?
Is capital money? Is money capital? Can capital take other forms? If so, then what is the essence of capital and what distinguishes it from its specific manifestations (as money or other forms)?
Can something which one moment is capital suddenly not be capital? What is necessary to maintain the capital form as such over time?
How does capital "add value to itself" (286)? How does it lay "golden eggs" (286)? Is this a magical process? Is capital also a fetish? Does Marx (like Dickens) seem to have the story of Jack and the Bean-Stalk somewhere in the back of his mind as he thinks about capitalism? How do the magic beans work? What is the secret of the bean stalk's magical growth? What is the secret of the hen that lays the golden eggs?
How does capital "enter into private relations with itself" (286)? What is Marx suggesting? Why and how does he use the father-and son-analogy? What has Marx deliberately omitted from that analogy? What does this suggest about the production (and reproduction) of value under capitalism? How does this relate to Aristotle's and Dante's notions of the natural and the unnatural? Is Marx inviting us to consider the sexual or asexual, natural or perverse, character of capitalist production? In those terms, what is capitalism?
What is, according to Marx, the "secret of profit making" (291)? Where in reality does the mysterious transmutation of M into M' occur? How does this relate to his conception of the hidden source of value in the commodity fetish? How does Marx claim to defetishize the seemingly magical process by which capital grows? What is the missing/hidden "mother" in the process of capitalist (father-son, M-M') production?
What is the most important commodity which the capitalist must purchase if he aspires to make a profit? Is the price paid for that commodity the basis of the profit? (i.e. is the commodity purchased at a fair price?). If the price paid is fair, then where is the margin of gain? Why does Marx suggest that the capitalist makes his profit not in the purchase but in the consumption of the commodity? What is the capitalist consuming? What does Marx suggest happens once the capitalist ("with an air of importance, smirking, intent on business") leads the laborer ("timid and holding back," 291) into the "hidden abode of production" (290). Is this ominous? What is the Giant going to do to little Jack?
How does Marx characterize the interactions of sellers and buyers in a free market? Is the case different for labor markets? What are the conditions for labor to be able to be sold in a market as a commodity? According to Marx, how do capitalists look at labor markets (289)?
Can people themselves become commodities? How? In a pure laissez faire society (without government regulation by legislation of labor contracts) what would be the tendency? (see p. 288 and footnote with the quotation from Hegel). Compare this potential situation to that in Dickens and in particular Bitzer's assertion, "I belong to the Bank" (Dickens 110).
Are laborers truly free in their decision to bring their labor to market? Why are laborers forced to sell their labor? What else can they sell? Why? What do they lack which prevents them from bringing other commodities to market?
What determines the unequal situations of capitalists and laborers? Are those inequalities an outcome of natural processes? What causes them?
Is it possible to have products which are not commodities? How? What according to Marx is essential to the existence of commodities? How do these arguments relate to the ideas of Aristotle on use and exchange values?
What are the functions of money which Marx enumerates? How do these functions relate to the stages of the development of production in human society?
Are the circulation of money and commodities sufficient conditions for the appearance of capitalism? What according to Marx is essential for capitalism to come about? How does capitalism constitute "a new epoch in the process of social production" (289)?
What determines the value of labor power? Is this different from what determines the value of other commodities?
How are basic needs and wants determined, according to Marx? Are they the same for all people, all societies, and all historical periods?
Is Marx being ironic in his singing of the praises of the free market (291)? Are those passages sarcastic? Why?
Does Marx's reference to what awaits the worker once he or she has concluded the sale of labor power in the sphere of simple comodity production and is headed into the production site as "a hiding" have any resonance with what we saw in the Genesis narrative or the tale of Tantalus?
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