ALB
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I don’t think that Engels’s insertion at the end of the first section of chapter 1 of Capital is at variance with Marx’s view of a commodity as a item of wealth produced, and reproducible, by human labour to be sold (exchanged). This being the case, that peasants and others whose surplus labour is taken in kind to be directly used by their exploiters are not producing commodities is clear. They are not producing things to be sold but directly for use, even if not theirs.
The word Marx used in German for “commodity” is Ware which has the same root as the English word “ware(s)” which in English is associated with something that is for sale (I don’t know about German, perhaps someone can help here). Marx had to find an equivalent in German for the word “commodity” that was used by Adam Smith, David Ricardo and other “Political Economists” whose theory he set out to criticise.
Actually, “commodity”, as its etymology suggests, was used by the Political Economists to mean what modern economists mean by “good” but in their minds was still associated with exchange as they considered this to be natural. Today, in economics, the word “commodity” is used only for some goods, those bought and sold in bulk whose individual items are indistinguishable such as wheat and metals, but is definitely associated with buying and selling.
In any event, in Marxian economics the term is defined as an item of wealth produced by labour that is produced to be sold.
If you want to use “commodity” as an alternative to “good” then, as DJP has pointed out, you will still need different words to distinguish between goods produced directly for use and goods produced to be sold so as to be able analyse the different types of society they imply.
According to this article, there is a reluctance amongst some members of the Ukrainian army to be used as canon-fodder as has reportedly been the case in the Russian army too:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/26/ukraine-frontline-russia-military-severodonetsk/
Ok. Do you think that every useful thing produced by human labour is a commodity?’
My answer is, ‘Yes!’
So this is what you really meant to say. But why didn’t you tell us before that you were defining “commodity” as any product of human labour? We assumed, because you said that you were setting out to provide an incontrovertible proof of the validity of the Marxian labour theory of value, that you would be using words in the same sense that Marx did.
But now it turns out that you are using the word “commodity” — a key concept in Marxian economics, defined in the opening pages of Das Kapital — in a quite different sense to Marx. Marx defines a commodity as a use-value produced by human labour that is produced to be exchanged. This contrasts with your view that a commodity is any use-value produced by human labour. Hence your peculiar statement that commodities would still exist in socialism but that they would not be exchanged (bought and sold) there.
I second DJP’s motion that, before we continue, you re-read the first section of the opening chapter of Capital, paying particular attention to its concluding paragraph:
“A thing can be a use value, without having value. This is the case whenever its utility to man is not due to labour. Such are air, virgin soil, natural meadows, &c. A thing can be useful, and the product of human labour, without being a commodity. Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labour, creates, indeed, use values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use values, but use values for others, social use values. (And not only for others, without more. The mediaeval peasant produced quit-rent-corn for his feudal lord and tithe-corn for his parson. But neither the quit-rent-corn nor the tithe-corn became commodities by reason of the fact that they had been produced for others. To become a commodity a product must be transferred to another, whom it will serve as a use value, by means of an exchange.)[12] Lastly nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.“
The passage in brackets [12] above was added by Engels to the 4th German edition in 1890 with this explanation:
“I am inserting the parenthesis because its omission has often given rise to the misunderstanding that every product that is consumed by some one other than its producer is considered in Marx a commodity.”
Ok. Do you think that every useful thing produced by human labour is a commodity? My answer is, ‘Yes!’
That can’t be right. Otherwise humans would have been producing commodities from the time we first came down from the trees and began using sticks and stones to get what we needed. In fact even before that while we were still up there and picking fruits to eat. Producing commodities would be part of the human condition and so would still exist even in socialism.
Are you sure you don’t want to correct yourself and answer “yes” to the question “Do you think that every useful thing produced by human labour for sale is a commodity?”.
That would still be wrong but not as absurd as what you have just said.
“Russian meddling in the Western Balkans risks pulling the region back into war, Liz Truss warned as she called on the West to not appease Vladimir Putin over his invasion of Ukraine. The Foreign Secretary accused Moscow of exerting a “malign” influence over the countries that used to be part of Yugoslavia with dirty tactics on a visit to Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
The Russian government may well be exerting a malign influence over the area but that’s exactly what she is doing. What could be more provocative than to go to Sarajevo to express support for one of the sides (Bosnia) in the civil war that led to the break-up of Yugoslavia, knowing that the other side (Serbia) is pro-Russia? Her recklessness risks restarting that civil war. The permanent civil servants at the Foreign Office must be tearing their hair out at her antics.
Some anarchists took the same position in the First World War. Others didn’t.
You say: “So many things such as pearls, natural diamond, gold, silver, bee wax, natural honey, apples, mangos, food grain, vegetables, water in bottles, oxygen in cylinders, poultry eggs, fishes, etc., etc. are bought & sold as commodities which we can neither produce nor reproduce.”
But then go on to say how they can be — though humans working. Production is not humans creating something new out of nothing. It is humans transforming materials that originally came from (the rest of) nature into something useful for them.
The examples you give are mainly of materials directly extracted from nature, but all the materials humans work on will ultimately have come from nature. It is just that the things you instance can be taken directly from nature. As you point out, this does involve work. And that work can be done again as long as these things can be found in nature, ie they are reproducible.
Marx points this out in the opening chapter of Capital:
“The use values, coat, linen, &c., i.e., the bodies of commodities, are combinations of two elements – matter and labour. If we take away the useful labour expended upon them, a material substratum is always left, which is furnished by Nature without the help of man. The latter can work only as Nature does, that is by changing the form of matter.[13] Nay more, in this work of changing the form he is constantly helped by natural forces. We see, then, that 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”.
In footnote 13 he expands on this by quoting an 18th century Italian writer who made the same point:
[“All the phenomena of the universe, whether produced by the hand of man or through the universal laws of physics, are not actual new creations, but merely a modification of matter. Joining together and separating are the only elements which the human mind always finds on analysing the concept of reproduction; and it is just the same with the reproduction of value” (value in use, although Verri in this passage of his controversy with the Physiocrats is not himself quite certain of the kind of value he is speaking of) “and of wealth, when earth, air and water in the fields are transformed into corn, or when the hand of man transforms the secretions of an insect into silk, or some pieces of metal are arranged to make the mechanism of a watch.”] – Pietro Verri, “Meditazioni sulla Economia Politica” [first printed in 1773]
Which all goes to show how crazy the whole proposal is. How else could their warships get to the Black Sea if Turkey won’t allow any warships through the Bosphorus? There is another river and canal route, I think, but that would take them from Gdańsk to Kherson which is Russia controlled. A bit of dead-end, then. The Lithuanian Foreign minister clearly hasn’t thought things through. I am assuming of course that he Lithuanian navy would participate in the coalition of the warmongers.
I am not privy to the plans of the Lithuanian navy but they would have to sail out of the Baltic Sea into the North Sea and then to the mouth of the Rhine in the Netherlands and then to Danube, I think.
I see that Boris just called Starmer in the House of a Commons “Sir Beer Korma”. Not bad, even if typical of his buffoonery.
That’s the exact opposite of what Zelensky claims in his nightly show. He claims that Russia wants to destroy everything and kill everybody in Ukraine. That’s so over the top that nobody can take it seriously. But no doubt it serves a purpose by stirring up hatred of Russians to mobilise workers to fight for the Ukrainian state.
I don’t think the French demographer has a case either. It would be a new cause for a state to go to war. In the 1930s Germany, Japan and Italy pleaded the opposite for their expansionism — that they were overpopulated and needed more “lebensraum”.
I suppose that in theory a desire to get control of more workers could be a reason for a state to go to war but I don’t think there are any historical examples (Japan perhaps in the 1930s?). The economic reasons that drive states to adopt war as a policy are more usually to acquire, defend or control sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investment outlets, and strategic points and places to protect these.
In the case of the Russian invasion of Ukraine it will be that the government there regarded Ukraine being incorporated into NATO as a threat to their security and wanted to pre-empt this.
A more realistic understanding than Truss of diplomacy from an old hand:
And here’s Lavrov’s direct reply to Truss:
“Lavrov said that Western politicians that say Russia should suffer defeat are bad at history.
“Once again, we are now living through such a period in our history. They say that Russia must “be defeated”, they must “defeat Russia”, make Russia “lose on the battlefield,” he said at an event entitled One Hundred Questions for a Leader. “I am sure that you know history better than the Western politicians who are casting these ‘spells.’”
“They must have done poorly in school,” Lavrov went on to say. “They have drawn the wrong conclusions from their understanding of the past and of Russia.”.“Liz Truss Retweeted
Gabrielius Landsbergis
@GLandsbergis
A great meeting with a true friend Liz Truss. Full agreement on the need to help Ukraine to achieve a complete victory.”At some point the US, let alone France and Germany, is going to have to restrain talk by Borys and Truss about “complete victory” and get them to fall in line with the US’s declared aim of weakening Russia so as to strengthen Ukraine’s hand in the inevitable negotiations to end the war.
Let’s see if Global Britain can organise this coalition of the warmongers on its own without the US.
The first problem would be to get British warships into the Black Sea as the answer to the question posed in this article appears to be none.
I believe Lithuania has a few patrol boats that they might be able to get there via the Danube.
I don’t understand that cartoon. It seems to be a pro-war anarchist criticising anti-war anarchists for saying “no war but the class war”. Is this a correct interpretation?
Here is a relevant point made (amongst others) in an article about the economic effects of the sanctions imposed on Russia:
“Over time, the economic sanctions imposed in support of Ukraine will have important economic consequences. The cost of living in virtually all countries of the world will rise, on top of the price inflation that was already taking off even before the war started. This will be blamed on the war, and declared by all right-thinking people to be part of the sacrifice that is necessary to defend democracy and peace against autocracy and war.”
“Right thinking people” such as politicians and the media might think this, but ordinary people may not. If they don’t, as would be understandable even normal, then they might use their votes to kick out the politicians who actions aggravated the cost of living crisis.
In fact, it would be poetic justice if, as a result of the extra pain they inflicted on ordinary people, Borys, Truss and the others should feel the pain of losing political office and being demoted to the opposition benches with scant chance of regaining their place on the greasy pole.
https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/the-ukrainian-war-and-the-end-of-globalization
