Fundamentals of Marx: The Commodity (REUPLOAD)
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- This is a reupload of the first video in the Fundamentals of Marx Series. In this video, we discuss Marx's concept of the commodity.
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Narration by "Z"
Script, editing, and graphics by "M"
Background Music:
Airport Lounge - Disco Ultralounge by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution licence (creativecommons.org/licenses/...)
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This has become my favourite channel on UA-cam
I feel as though this channel using multiple people to voice Marxist theory is a really smart idea that makes this channel so accessible because I feel as though im a part of a project. Love the content
You’re work amazing,so underrated !
From the explanation to the visuals, this series is top notch. Keep up the great work.
Marx was truly one of the most intelligent individuals
You were too :)
Dude was a moron, and a narcissist to boot
Always will recommend this channel. Love the work and so much more if it is needed. Thank you comrades.
comment to please the almighty algorithm :)
Do you no longer have a discord? I tried joining but it did not work
Quality video
!
Value is subjective. Value is subjective. Value is subjective.
Glad I found this channel. Now to spam this everywhere people haven't shut me out yet!
You must be real fun at parties.
For the algorithm!
There are some errors in the text - 2 of 2:
* The value equivalence examples in the video are not exact:
- A bottle of wine is the equivalent of three hammers.
That goes for an exchange, maybe for a few more, but not indefinitely.
This becomes clearer if you want to exchange the wine for money: If this value equivalence were always correct, there would be no risk of bankruptcy for the entrepreneur, because he only needed to produce wine and he would always be able to exchange it for money.
But that's not how it works in reality. Before the exchange, people evaluate the work results and only assign value to them, i.e. they only buy them if they appear to be relatively useful compared to other products.
- Marx's theory of value describes a special case: all products produced are sold at their expected value. Only then can the value formula of Marx W = c + v + s be applied to the market or the production side of the commodity society.
In reality there is only one expected value on the production side, not a correct one, and the real value is only formed on the market.
* The societal necessary working time is decisive for the value.
- The socially necessary working time does not exist as such. This can only be determined retrospectively from the individual value assignment processes on the market.
* The decisive factor for the value is how much work has gone into the products.
- The work alone is not decisive for the value. The evaluations of the work results by the potential or real buyers are also decisive.
If, for example, 1,000 devices are produced, but only 800 of them can be sold, then the work done on the unsaleable products is not qualified as socially useful and therefore not as value-creating. In other words - no value is assigned to the unsalable products.
This is silly, only slightly better than Marx himself.
Value is subjective.
And the 200 units which cannot be sold at price X don't have zero value, they are just valued less than $X.
@@authenticallysuperficial9874
This is serious and significantly better than Marx and also the teachings of Austrian economics!
• Value is a relationship between exchange partners
There are no intrinsic values! Value is a relationship that people enter into with one another to exchange a non-freely available good for a non-freely available equivalent of value (usually money).
Before the exchange, the potential exchange partners usually have different views on the values assigned to the possible exchange goods. These are one-sided and completely subjective and have no direct relevance to the economy.
• Exchanges are made on the basis of a common value size
In order to exchange - an economic exchange is always (!) an exchange of equivalent value - they must agree on a common value.
In a bazaar they come to an agreement through dialogue, in a department store through the buyer's unilateral adjustment to the seller's specifications.
If they cannot agree, there will be no exchange: the purchase contract/invoice cannot contain an offer price and a purchase price that deviates from it.
• Offer price and purchase price
The offer price reflects the expected value that the potential seller associates with the potential exchange good in order to make it visible to potential buyers.
The purchase price (identical to the sales price) reflects the real economic value. It only comes about if there is an exchange.
• Purchase price, money and value
The purchase price corresponds to a certain amount of money. This in turn corresponds to a right to a percentage share of all goods subject to economic exchange.
This right is, under the same purchasing conditions, the same for both exchange partners, e.g. a certain amount of goods from a shopping basket or a certain part of goods based on average values for the given currency area.
The buyer gives up exactly this right as an equivalent to the exchange good that he receives in return, nothing more and nothing less.
The seller gives up his exchange goods for exactly this right to goods, neither for more nor for less.
• Value includes subjective and objective elements
It must contain subjective elements because it works between the conscious processes of the exchange partners.
It must contain objective elements because it goes beyond an individual and affects both exchange partners; value, as a relationship between people, also has an effect between the exchange partners and society.
Important subjective elements of value are the subjective reflections of the objective, common value agreed upon by the exchange partners. Before the exchange, these are usually of different sizes.
An important objective element of value is the common value that the exchange partners agree on for and with the exchange (without exchange there is no such thing in real - without exchange there is only an expected common value).
The common value is objective because it affects not only one but both exchange partners and also towards society, among other things through the transfer of purchasing power, the transfer of goods and the payment of VAT.
However, since the common value is always tied to conscious processes and cannot exist in objects or the like, it is called intersubjective.
• Subjective views on value
Example: A buyer purchases a television for $1,500
Without question, the seller can estimate the amount of money he will receive as equivalent value at $1,800. He will still only receive $1,500, objectively speaking.
Without question, the buyer can value the TV at $2,000. Nevertheless, objectively speaking, he only exchanges it for $1,500.
Both exchange only the money supply of $1,500 for a good, both of which are assigned a value of exactly $1,500, not a value of $1,800 or $2,000.
The ideas about the value of $1,800 and $2,000 are purely subjective, one-sided and have neither any meaning for society nor any real meaning for the exchange partners. At the social level, purchasing power is only transferred to the value of $1,500, only this amount is stated on the purchase contract/invoice, and VAT is only applied to $1,500.
• Evaluation and weighting
Buyers do not buy based on valuation, otherwise every visitor to a department store would buy all the things that they judge to be worth more than is expressed by the asking price.
Buyers buy based on needs, specifically weighted needs. They have to be weighted because people's needs are usually greater than their ability to satisfy them.
Reading this book as a tenth grader i need a few life lines here and there
Aren't you a little old to believe in this rubbish?
Great video! However, I have a question: let's say bananas go scarce and producing 3 bananas requires the same amount of socially necessary labor time than producing 3 yatchs. In theory, those bananas have the equivalent exchange value than the yatchs, but who would take that trade? Bananas still have a use value and so does the yatch. What does LTV/Marx have to say about this?
You change the yachts for money and buy the bananas...because someone has to make the money too, so money has use value too...
@@erdoctor2815 but why would i spend that amount of money on bananas? i'd rather buy a cheaper fruit
@@michaelbailey9549 what, you've never spent Big money in overpriced things? Like...gamer bath water?
People used to sell their houses to buy tulips, not even tulips, potential tulips
People used to sell their houses to buy tulips, not even tulips, potential tulips
For Marx work is time. However, Marx considered workers people that work “per se”.
No mention abut the quality of work or how the work is done. If people has the innate attitude to work precisely, his system his sound. This remains an unsolved thing imho.
Actually Menger solved it
LEFT COM MOMENT /j
Are you guys Marxist-Leninists?
I'm a Sidiousist-Vaderist
@@Red-rj7sr Could you share a link of the discord server?
The channel doesn't really use specific labels. Broadly speaking, we're Marxists :)
@@themarxistproject Oh, that's nice to hear. I just asked because I don't even know for sure what's the best way to implement Marxism
@@boringname3657 its obviously the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Hoxhaism-Prachanda Path
Keep drinking the cool aid
major error here being that trade does not imply equal value in any way. people trade because two people value what they’re getting more than what they’re giving up.
Not necessarily. Two people trade simply because they NEED/DESIRE the commodity they do not yet possess. How much they themselves "value" those commodities is not important, since only exchange value is important in the real world. And by doing this trade, using money instead of a barter system in the real world, they are (not consciously, of course) placing the abstract labour involved in the production of two different commodities at the same level. This is why the exchange value of 5 cups becomes equal to 2 mugs, for example. BY DEFINITION. Although, the concrete labour involved in the production of 5 cups and 2 mugs remains qualitatively and quantitively different.
@@arnabbhattacharya1992 ok, a couple meaningless assertions...
Welcome to Austrian economics. Debunking Marxism since before Marx
There are some errors in the text - 1 of 2:
* A commodity cannot contain any value.
- Value is a social relationship. Such is formed between people and only works between people.
- The commodity and its equivalent (mostly money) are only the reference points for such a relationship.
- The value will be assigned in principle the same kind to both of them, the commodity and the value equivalent.
- The difference here is that money acts like a general commodity that has the use value of exchange, i.e. money is assigned value by practically all members of the currency area, while it is assigned, for example, to things produced only by certain interested parties.
* A common characteristic of all goods is that they are products of human, socially useful or abstract labor (labor).
- This statement is not true. Most goods also contain some mechanical work.
- Machine work contributes to value creation in the same way as human work.
- How does value creation come about in human work:
Human labor creates or processes various materials, assemblies, etc.
For the fact that the worker works, he receives wages from the entrepreneur. The amount of the wages depends on the value of the labor power.
The value of the labor power is linked as a cost factor proportionally to the products it produces or processes as a claim for replacement when the products are sold.
The entrepreneur also adds all the costs of the parts, facilities, etc., which are necessary to produce the product but are not directly processed (e.g. buildings, electricity, water, communication, cleaning work and much more) on a pro rata basis to the costs of the human labor.
The entrepreneur not only wants to be reimbursed for the costs with the sale of the products, but also to receive more money than he has spent on production. In this way he adds an expected surplus value that appears sufficient to him. All the costs (with Marx c + v + s) are linked to the work product as an offer price and the product is offered on the market.
At this point in time, according to Marx, the labor product is not yet a commodity. It only becomes a commodity when it becomes a use value for others through exchange.
Exchange is the criterion of socially useful work or abstract work.
However, the exchange only takes place on the market, i.e. the value can only be formed on the market and assigned to the goods (as well as money).
The value formula for the real value also shows that the value is formed on the market.
First the value formula for the production side of the commodity society:
W|expected = c|cost factor; replacement expected + v|cost factor; replacement expected + s|expected.
The surplus value is only paid for by the buyer in the market. Since the surplus value is part of the value, the value can therefore only be formed on the market, but there are other reasons for this.
Here is the value formula for the real value:
W|real = c|cost-replacing + v|cost-replacing + s|real.
The value arises from the fact that the expenses (ultimately living expenses plus what is referred to as a pension) are replaced and usually a surplus value that appears to be sufficient is paid.
Only through this step does the use-value of the commodity become a use-value for others through exchange; only in this way is the labor expended as socially useful and thus qualified as value-forming.
This works in the same way with a machine: the machine is bought like a slave or leased like a temporary worker.
The machine needs means of subsistence: electricity, fats, etc. ("food"), work surface (work and "living space"), maintenance ("health care"), repairs ("medical treatment"), reprogramming and extensions ("further training") etc.
The cost of the means of subsistence of the labor power machine is linked to the labor products proportionally as a claim to replacement in the same way as the means of subsistence of the human labor force and consequently they contribute to the creation of value in the same way as human labor force.
In addition, the entrepreneur not only wants to be reimbursed for the proportional costs for the machines, just as for the human labor, but a little more than he has spent on them. Consequently, machines are involved in the creation of surplus value in the same way as humans.
"This statement is not true. Most goods also contain some mechanical work" - how do you think these machines were created?
@@catsatemycookies8988 I assume that all (!) physical things were created in connection with mechanical work, the machines with a large proportion of human work.
What's the problem with that?
@@rainerlippert The machines have labour in them
@@catsatemycookies8988
No, according to Marx they only have work in them (a part of this work s human work):
Cap. I, p. 30
Whoever directly satisfies his wants with the produce of his own labor, 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.
Work only becomes labor, i.e. socially useful work, when the work products become use values for others through exchange (!). However, that happens in the market, if at all.
“Labor” ”cannot be produced as such. There is only work in production. The value, i.e. the "socially useful" is assigned on the market and thus the value too.
@@rainerlippert Are you trying to say Marx was against the labour theory of value, come on.
keep drinking the cool aid.
"if it cannot be traded it has no value" "value is because of labour" you were so close to grasping the basic principle of economics. So close.