PS 116 Marxism Communal Study Guide

Last Checked by John on Friday, April 27 at 10:30pm Define the Following Terms: Capitalism:  Good at concealing the true form of things o That Possessors of money are equal to Possessors of commodities appears to be true on the surface, but this masks underlying inequality.  Unequal in power, not equally free. The owner of labor power can choose to sell labor power or starve. The money owner can chose to buy labor power to make capital, or other commodities to meet his/her needs. The money owner (capitalist) never has to starve A cycle of producing things that we need purely for the sake of exchange Capitalists:  Anybody who acts as an agent of capital. Someone who acts according to the logic of capital as means or agents to capital. People just move capital around and help it to self- valorize. Use-Value  The qualitative form of a commodity (*remember commodities have a dual nature*)  Specifically refers to the usefulness or practical application of something. It comes from the physical body or form of the commodity, and is only realized when consumed (glass hammer has no use value because its form is not suitable for the purpose. Steel hammer’s usefulness comes from its material form and properties).  Unlike value, use-values depends on the qualitative nature of material objects and the specific or concrete forms of labor they may be used in. The concept of use value appears in every society (p. 126). The use-value of a chair consists in the fact that you can sit on it. Exchange-Value  A commodity’s quantitative dimension. Becomes apparent only when one kind of commodity is exchanged for another kind; definite quantities of congealed labor time  Exchange values equalize and quantify commodities so they can be exchanged with one another.  A definite social manner of expressing labor bestowed on a thing (176)  The proportion in which one type of use-value is exchanged against other types of use- values (p. 126). The exchange-value of one chair can be 20 pounds of steel, 5,000 Mardi Gras beads, 0.05 computers, etc. It is a purely quantitative relationship; i.e., a relationship among things that are, as values, qualitatively the same. Value Congealed abstract human labor (p. 128). Labor is the only source of value, value does not equal price at all (though they may be correlated) - the substance of value is labor, how we measure it (i.e. magnitude of value) is labor time (p.131).