Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Exchange-value – the most misunderstood concept in Marx's analysis of the commodity – is best grasped by moving from the immediate to the complex. Useful things found in nature or procured without exchange and used for private consumption (directly or in the creation of something else for private use) have a qualitatively distinct, concrete, natural form. Their utility is what matters; they have no relevant social substance even if they are produced through labor. They are not exchanged; they do not contain value. Useful things intended for exchange are procured or produced by social labor. Exchangeable commodities have a visible, concrete, useful form and an invisible social substance of quantitatively comparable units of congealed, socially necessary, simple, abstract, labor time. This invisible substance is value; the commodities’ “plain, homely, natural form” is the physical repository of their value ( Marx 1976 : 138). To be exchanged, the abstract value congealed within each commodity must achieve a particular form of expression. That form only arises in the social relations of exchange; it is, therefore, a social form. As the formal expression of value arising through exchange, Marx termed it the commodity's exchange-value. It is often thought that value and exchange-value are interchangeable concepts; they are not. Commodities’ value – the socially necessary, simple, abstract ... log in or subscribe to read full text