Young Master Smeet
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Fans of chess may appreciate considering the rough scoring technique used by players to evaulate moves. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_piece_relative_value
Quote:In chess, the chess piece relative value system conventionally assigns a point value to each piece when assessing its relative strength in potential exchanges. These values help determine how valuable a piece is strategically. They play no formal role in the game but are useful to players, and are also used in computer chess to help the computer evaluate positions.Now, this is exactly the same as what we are talkng about here. Literally, when you swap pieces it's worth knowing that a bishop is worth a knight but not a rook, and note that pawns are used as the standard of value, what is a piece worth in pawns. So, it's value is its usefullness in winning the game, but its exchange value is there when it compared with another piece.Now, the first move really is ranking the peices in order: Q>R>B>K>P after that, it's assessing the relative differences (as you can see from Wikipedia there is a degree of disagreement over whetehr bishops are worth more than knights or are equal).
Where a collection of people live by swapping things they have found or made to get the useful things they want, they need a means of making sure they are getting a fair deal. Since they won't swap things they already have a use for, the features of the things swapped will be different, and they will have nothing in common, save that they are things that have been found or made, that is to say, into which effort has been put into finding and making. Sicne that effort is the common property, we can use that as a measure for whetehr a swap is reasonable. This enables the group of people to make sure they aren't wasting effort, and to help them divide effort up between different tasks. Effort is somethine people do. Since we can't see the effort, we can only know it by the things people find and make, so we compare them, perhaps in terms of a third thing used like a ruler.Now, have you never been in a workplac wher you've had to think about using your time (or sharing out tasks with colelagues) in order to get things done? That's what value does across widely dispersed groups of people.
But I'm not quoting Marx back at you, I'm explaining in my own words. The fact that I'm not getting what you're trying to say from your analogy suggsts to me that it isn't a succesful way of clarifying the ideas. Now, I've explained that value is about social production using commodities, and about dividing the time of society among the different productive activities : something that is readily understandable to anyone who has ever been in a workplace and had a gaffer shouting 'Time is money' at them. That's all you need to understand to understand value.Now, I'll agree that going back to Capital over the years there are nuances and aspects that I missed in my first reading of it, but that would be true of most books I've returned to later on. I'm not taking the piss, I'm relaying my experience.
Lbird,it doesn't work for me because it isn't correct and seems to add confusion rather than reducing it. A brick is a componant part of a wall, and clay is a component part of a brick. Vertical stacking is an emergent property of bricks, which creates wall, so I think you were mixing up your categories in any case. A brick is a brick in itself, its use-value can be included in building walls, or putting in socks and hitting people with. It acquires value when it is created for exchange, the value comes from humans. When it is exchanged, that value emerges as exchange value which in turn is realised through price.I remember when I first read those first three chapters and being bowled over by the clarity and care Marx put in, indeed, it's the caution and pedentic detail that makes capital a tough read, not imprecision.
Quote:I’m inclined to regard ‘exchange-value’ as the position in a social relationship, and ‘value’ as the emergent property, the ‘social acid’ that destroys human relationships.I'd suggest that's off-beam. Exchange value is what happens when valuies are compred in terms of a third commodity or unit of measure. So, it's more of the relationship between values (which in turn are an expression of the relationship between people) (at lest so for Marx). To look at your brick analogy, dog protection is a use value. The brick contains value, which can be expressed as exchange value (and realised as price), and it's use value is forming pat of a wall. the wall has value, which would be the value of all the component bricks and mortar, plus the abstract average socially necessary human labour time it takes to aessemble them into a wall.
DJP,yes, but all definitions suffer in detail. OED gives this for a table:
Quote:A flat and comparatively thin piece of wood, stone, metal, or other solid material; a board, plate, slab, or tablet, esp. one forming a surface used for a particular purpose;So, how does a table differ from a bench? We all know the difference, but "Ah, we use a bench for sitting, we don't generally sit on tables" The OED definition does, but you may need to dig deeper, the point is that the conversation should never end. I have a mild disagreement that the value isn't the relationship but is the outward sign of inward relationship, but that is not to say that saying value is a relationship is wrong, but capable of furtehr refinement.
The above is how I'd explain value to a someone. Since value is itself a massive simplification and abstraction it shouldn't be necessary to go beyond: "there is only so much work done in a community, and when items are exchanged between people, their economic value is based on the labour time taken to produce them, as that is the only property common to all comodities." One sentence.
It's as complex as explaining centimetres, litres, feet and stones. The application of human labour is the only commonality for commodities. The Robinson analogy makes things very celar, if we as a community only have a set amount of time available for work, it makes sense to measure tasks by the time taken by members of our society to achieve them.
Actually, Marx did use an analogy:
Quote:A simple geometrical illustration will make this clear. In order to calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures, we decompose them into triangles. But the area of the triangle itself is expressed by something totally different from its visible figure, namely, by half the product of the base multiplied by the altitude. In the same way the exchange values of commodities must be capable of being expressed in terms of something common to them all, of which thing they represent a greater or less quantity.But we don't ned analogies: the concept is simple, that we can only evaluate or compare like things (we can't compare apples with oranges) if we're going to exchange we need sopme sort of common feature to compare them, and the only one available is abstract labour time. That is the basis on which we make exchanges and measure the worth to the community of work done. One way to think of it is as below
Quote:In a village in Somewhereia, everyone shares a set of skills and their produce is derived from local natural resources. Through custom or inclination each person pursues a particular trade, but is capable of pursuing any other in the village.These people exchange their products on a regular basis. Each would know how long it took their fellow to produce their good, and how long it would take them to make it themselves. They would also know how much of their own product they would produce in the same amount of time and how much they would be able to exchange for that product.If anyone tried to overcharge for a good, people would stop buying and make it themselves (or a competitor could enter the market and undercut them). Each person would thus be able to calculate whether it would be better for them to buy a good or make it themselves.In this scenario prices and values would be equal.Nearly, the abstract labour time is there, but the human mind is brought to ber upon it, and it only exists because of the commodity relation. Value itself isn't a relationship.And a relationship is a thing, it exists in the world, it manifests itself in concrete ways, and is lived.
Already given it: Worth or quality as measured by a standard of equivalence. Every commodity contains a concretisation of abstract human labour, which lurks beneath the surface of our attempts to find a means of comparative exchange between commodities. In a way the value is the thing in itself, but it certainly cannot be grasped or touched directly, much, as you say, like love.
"Allright, pet, howsabout we head o'er t' mine so's I can transfer information rich protein soup between my bit of modified digestive tract and thine?" gets them every time.
ISTR research that eating chocolate could produce brain states similar to those found in people experiencing love. There is such a thing as the secual failure hormones that are part of the experience of love (or rejection). Obviously, love is not a brain state alone, the adrenaline release of orgasm is experienced by the whole bod. Love is a physical fact of the whole body, not just the mind. It is not an airy fairy thing, but a physical sensous experience. The meatbot produce ideas of love to post-facto justify their experience and explain it to others, this culminates in the ultimate abstraction of Romantic love (the discourses of which exist to cover up the lack of physical love in a context of business marriage).
Actually, just to look a little closer at what Charlie wrote about value, we have this:
Quote:Im graden Gegenteil zur sinnlich groben Gegenständlichkeit der Warenkörper geht kein Atom Naturstoff in ihre Wertgegenständlichkeit ein.Just consulted both google translate and a technically proficient German speakr, and Naturstuff (natural stuff, literally) does not quite translate as Matter, a suggested english trabnslation is "there is no atom of nature in value"
