Emancipatory Implications of Karl Marx’s View of The Commodity

In his analysis of the commodity (Capital: Volume One, Chapter One), Karl Marx distinguishes two different aspects to the commodity. It has both a use-value and an exchange value. Its ‘use-value’ simply means the commodity is prized for its capacity to satisfy a particular human want. It is valued in this sense because of its usefulness. But commodities are also prized in another way as well – they can be exchanged for any other commodity on the basis they share, in varying degrees, different quantities of exchange-value. So, to take an example where the quantities of exchange value broadly match, an apple can be exchanged for a pencil or a packet of cigarette rolling papers.

The reason why this has emancipatory implications lies in considering what happens if you need that pencil or those cigarette rolling papers, but you do not posess the apple in the first place. Obviously then, you go without. If you cannot afford something, you do not get it. Therefore, the human freedom is, in some sense, curtailed. The product may exist, but you do not get it unless you have an equivalent amount of exchange-value with which to obtain it, usually a quantity of money. So, for example, supermarkets throw away around a third of their quickly-perishable foodstuffs whilst the United Nations estimates 10% of the world population is hungry or malnourished. This is not a moralistic criticism: the supermarket management, now matter how benign they may be, really cannot just give away that food because then everyone would be demanding it for free, in which case they would not be in business. The criticism is levelled at the law of value which governs all economic transactions in a capitalist society. This economic law is inhibiting freedom.

What is worse, as market conditions deteriorate, wages have less purchasing power. So, the level of unfreedom increases in capitalism – ‘progress’ is very mixed, to say the least.

To change the law of value, society would need to be producing directly to meet the needs of the individual consumer, rather than producing goods for sale. The only way this can be done is via the mediation of a social plan. Using powerful online technologies, society could adapt its production to what is reasonably requested, and distribute the common bounty without the need for money, or any other token of exchange-value. It is only in this way, humanity will become largely free and happy.

On Capitalism: The Metaphor of the School Bully

High school bully Biff Tannen (‘Back to the Future’ trilogy) was inspired by Donald Trump


Capital is like a bully at school who is supremely dominant. He goes around nicking the other kid’s lunch money. He harasses the girls and litters the place. He doesn’t do his homework but steals the work done by others. The school authorities are aware this guy is a problem for the functioning of a harmonious atmosphere, but, apart from the occasional “ooh you naughty boy”, refuse to expel the bully. Indeed, most of the time, they turn a blind eye to his behaviour, educate the other children that this is just unchangeable ‘human nature’, the only way of running a school. It would take a sea-change in the school authorities to actually expel the bully and create a nice school.

In the real world the struggle between those that want the sea-change and the lying complacent traditional authorities, is manifested as a struggle between political progressives (including the direct victims of the bully who rebel), and conservatives. So beware of the right-ward drift of the Conservative Leadership contest. Your taxes just are what lunch costs. Cutting taxes will not make you richer, it will simply remove any support you have against the bully. You will get less lunch. And allowing the bully to run amok even more will just mean he robs more and more from you. If the bully wasn’t taking part of your lunch money, taxation would not be a problem. Indeed one would see it as good for the school as a whole.

Regime change begins at home, and goal-directed regime change to expel the bully is the only consistent form of humanism. Sometimes, thinking metaphorically can be an aid to truth.