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Re: nochmal Gebrauchswert | war: [ox] Werthaltigkeit von Informationsg...



On Thu, 25 Sep 2003, Franz Nahrada wrote:

oh, how lovely it is to do theory again instead of decision - making...;-)

I never have to do any decision making anyway.. what an easy life :-)
In fact, I would be more interested in discussing Wert in general
(and how it ends/will end) but I still don't have any arguments that
Stefan Mz. cannot destroy very easily, so I'll stay quiet on that...

Anyway, now I find I agree and disagree with you in about equal parts.

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. 

When I wrote 'general', I meant that Nuetzlichkeit exists in any human
society (making it a rather content-less term) whereas Gebrauchswert
exists only where there are commodities. That sentence is not in agreement
with Marx unless you read him in a very specific way (see below), but I
hope it's allowed to disagree even with the coiners of terms ;-)

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.

Yes, fine. Though that sentence too is a general one...

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. 

This is in danger of turning into Marx-exegesis instead of real
discussion, but I don't think that is the whole truth. In Kapital 
itself Marx begins by saying that anything can have Gebrauchswert, 
but as the development continues we find that Gebrauchswert is primarily
an aspect of commodities, and so is as social as Wert. Certainly when
he wrote later discussing Das Kapital (the book) in Randglossen zu Adolph 
Wagners Lehrbuch der politischen Ökonomie, this is how he describes it.
 
This is typical:

Ich teile also nicht den Wert in Gebrauchswert und Tauschwert als 
Gegensätze, worin sich das Abstrakte, der Wert, spaltet, sondern die 
konkrete gesellschaftliche Gestalt des Arbeitsprodukts; Ware ist 
einerseits Gebrauchswert und andrerseits Wert, nicht Tauschwert, da die 
bloße Erscheinungsform nicht ihr eigner Inhalt ist.
[notes on Wagner; 
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/01/wagner.htm]

NB. ...die konkrete gesellschaftliche Gestalt des Arbeitsprodukts; Ware
                                                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ist einerseits Gebrauchswert und andrerseits Wert...

In this context, Gebrauchswert is anything but 'natural'.

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)

I don't think this 'logical relation of necessity' is any more (or less)
present in Marx than my 'Usefulness != Usevalue' !

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.

Yes. In a way the most important kind of Gebrauchswert in Marx is the
Gebrauchswert of Arbeitskraft. Which is: Arbeit. And every day a huge 
amount of effort goes into trying to force this to be quantifiable.
I have been called to meetings at work in the past where I have been
told quite seriously 'we need to measure the quality of your work'.
Meaning: we want to reduce your work to only what is quantifiable.
That was in teaching; in programming, an equivalent is to ignore all
elegance and count  Lines Of Code. And in every sphere there is always
an attempt to reduce work to quantity; though in itself it is qualitative.

With other commodities the same thing happens to a smaller extent:
you are given the impression that if you buy model A for X euros, model B 
for 2X Euros, or luxury model C for 4X euros, you will gain a 
corresponding increasing amount of Gebrauchswert for each increment in
euros. 

So it is possible to make a case that this association of Gebrauchswert
with quantity is not a purely logical/formal move by Marx, but represents
a real phenomenon.


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.

Bad example, I see now! :-(

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).

Yes, I accept this criticism completely. My example was bad.


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.

Can you give a reference for this? (german version is fine :-)


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. 

I have either a language or a philosophical problem with this sentence,
I'm not sure which. How could a 'need' have a 'need to compare'? 
Or do you mean Marx's need to make Nutzlichkeit quantitative was a 
constraint on the way he used the term?

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

Yes, he wrote (most of) that quote (Engels added some of it). But as I
wrote above I think it's possible to argue that this is a 'first pass' at
the problem, to be refined later. Just as 'jungfräulicher Boden,
natürliche Wiesen, wildwachsendes Holz usw.' can have Tauschwert without
having Wert, but only in a very superficial way (as Preis) - they would
not be the starting point for really analyzing Tauschwert any more than
they are for Gebrauchwert, the real starting point being the commodity.


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.


Sure. The Tauschwert too (I bet the magazine would cost a fraction of the
price without the CD). Appearance, not essence ;-)


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 get 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.

That, I still feel I agree with!
	

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.

In English this Austrian (and not only) use of "Nützlichkeit" is usually
written 'utility'. This is convenient, because if you write 'usefulness'
it is clear you are not thinking in the Austrian context ;-)

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.

I do not know of a theory either. It seems to me that perhaps keeping
the distinction between Gebrauchwert and Nuetzlichkeit might be part of
the beginning of one. But the lack of one is a practical problem for
me - when I see people enthusiastic about the development of free
designs which just copy all the features of commercial ones, I would
like to be able to say 'but why don't we create something more genuinely
useful' (?? high nuetzlichkeit, don't care about gebrauchwert??) but have
no way to do this without being both completely moralistic and completely
subjective. Maybe in this case the answer is not to refine abstract terms,
but to work on concrete examples, but it would be better to do both.

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.

Yes :-)

Graham

Franz


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