Re: nochmal Gebrauchswert | war: [ox] Werthaltigkeit von Informationsg...
- From: "Franz Nahrada" <f.nahrada reflex.at>
- Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 21:39:33 +0200
oh, how lovely it is to do theory again instead of decision - making...;-)
Graham Seaman writes:
A long time ago (2 years now?) Franz N. convinced me that Gebrauchswert is
an aspect of the commodity, while nutzlichkeit is general. The
nutzlichkeit of a commodity may be tiny, but if it has enough to be sold,
then it has Gebrauchswert.
So you agree that Marx - the person that coined the terms - had a good
reason to state that "Nuetzlichkeit is basically linked to Gebrauchswert"
If a thing is useful then - it has usevalue. or: Nuetzlichkeit is based in
some real, material, natural, existing - you name it - quality of the
thing which is sold. I did not claim that usefulness is "general", that
might have been a misunderstanding. The thing is much more complicated and
at the end I will also say why I think we should not talk about usefulness
in general. Every usefulness is special.
Marx whole argument is targeted in one direction - and we have to of
course now carefully examine that he did not overdo his point: He wants to
prove that the "Usefulness" is rooted in the natural quality of things,
while the "Exchangefulness" is a social quality.
So the first step is to examine the equation "Usefulnesss" = "Usevalue".
Of course this is not a simple equation (But a logical relation of
necessity) and it is interesting to ask: why does Marx use the term
"usevalue" instead of "usefulness"? What is the new information?
The answer is maybe not very pleasant to Marxists. We could see a petitio
principii in this. Marx wants to get to the point that usefulness = the
quality of the natural thing = but quantified!!! He often talks of
Gebrauchswert as if he was talking about "Quantity". That is the deeper
sense of introducing the Word use-"value", it is refering to a scale.
You are grabbing that instinctively, when you state::
One commodity may have more Gebrauchswert than another, without being more
nutzlich. Clothes in this year's fashion, compared with clothes in last
year's colours, for example. The colour affects the saleability, and so
the exchange value, without affecting the usefulness in any rational
sense.
You talk about usevalue and you talk quantity by comparison. interesting.
I would not subscribe to this use of the term usevalue, though. When
things are less saleable, there is less usefulness for the buyer sor they
have changed their needs. We are not talking about lack of money or time
or other things. if usefullness goes down, usevalue goes down. and vice
versa.
Marx would not have subscribed either. He did not think of use-value and
usefulness in terms of rational needs. "Der Gebrauchswert mag dem Magen
oder der Phantasie entspringen" - if some thing is needed and wanted, it
has Gebrauchswert, Bible or Wheat. If something is out of fashion, it has
lost its usevalue until a process of retrieval happens. In fact according
to Marx, by this "moralic" change in society use-value is directly
affected. But that is irrelevant for him (maybe not for us).
For Marx, G ebrauchswert is a category of social dimensions (rooted in
Nützlichkeit) but it is also the quantity of a thing. He does not even
give any second thought to this paradox because he wants to prove
something completely different. Marx really wants to prove that
Gebrauchswert IS a natural thing (quality), but SERVES as quantity to
express something completely different, the second factor of the
commodity. In fact, he states Gebrauchswert is in itself not scaleable,
but Gebrauchswert (as quality) can be used to express quantities of -
value.
Marx therefore does not even reflect on "higher or lower use-value". The
need to compare Nützlichkeit is nothing inherent to any need, it is rather
more an external constraint. In his view, something is rather either
useful or not. A glass of water can be very useful and have high usevalue,
but no value or little value.
On the other hand, knowledge (eg. the binomial theorem) has great
nutzlichkeit but no Gebrauchswert. 'Linix ist wertlos' so also 'Linux
ist gebrauchswertlos (aber nutzlich)'.
Marx would not subsribe on this either. ""Ein Ding kann Gebrauchswert
sein, ohne Wert zu sein." This was mentionned long ago by Ralf Kraemer and
I think he was completely right on that point.
http://www.oekonux.de/liste/archive/msg01427.html
To give you a plain example, somebody bought PC Praxis 10/03 today, a
computermagazine. He bought it because it had a Knoppix CD and some sexy
promises about controlling windowsXP with Linux. So the Gebrauchswert of
this magazine was based in the Knoppix CD - all Linux.
This is related to Holger Weiss's distinction between 'Gesellschaft'
and concrete Gesellschaftsform.
I do agree that there is something fishy about the category
"Gebrauchswert". But let me again explain what I meant some years ago. The
term Gebrauchswert is de-qualifying, not only in the sense Marx reduced it
to, but generally it reflects the difference / barrier between this
concrete social form and the questions of quality. It is a "lets ged rid
of it, its not our business, thats not the point" - category. In its
abstraction, it reflects that society is not built on reflecting the use
of things but rather comparing their value. That might be different in
another society.The category is completely harmless and exactly that is
its fault. Sorry, I cannot say it any better.
I'm surely not talking for Franz, but that was my understanding of what
he meant, and it made sense to me...
Sorry, but the Term general "Nützlichkeit" was abused by economic theory
(Austrian school of subjective value theory - Menger, Böhm-Bawerk etc) in
a very apologetic sense. They confuse usefulness with value, so in the end
money is a wonderful invention to represent the human necessity to choose
between scarce goods. I have not seen a genuine theory of Nützlichkeit
avoiding this apologetic cul-de-sac, unless perhaps we leave the mental
world of European thought and refuge to some systems I vaguely heard
about. But I do not know much about them and would be eager to learn if
there was a genuine concept. Until that, a statement on "usefulness" in
general seems pretty - useless to me.
Franz
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