Commodities as the object utility
Essay 2
Karl Max identified the primary forms of value as being simple, isolated, and accidental. They represent an indiscriminate way in which the owners of two different commodities can exchange them without feeling that they have lost some of the value they put in the product. These features allow people to take part in trading activities freely as the means of exchange has become universally accepted. Max’s theory was analogous to the existing story on the development of money. The simple form of value plays a critical role in allowing people to compare two items effectively. The things cannot be compared unless they have been converted into their simplest form, money. This conversion helps individuals compare two separate goods, allowing them to take part in a trade that will leave both parties satisfied with their transaction. The value-form of each good gives a reasonable reflection of the labor put into the design or acquisition of the product in question.
The isolated form of value comes into existence when a commodity serves as a medium of exchange. The product is in full circulation as it is used to acquire other commodities. This law formed the basis on which barter trade occurred. For example, people would trade using gold as a medium of exchange. However, this form was full of bias because the value of gold could not be broken down into constituent parts. Therefore, there were cases where people sold their goods at undervalued or overvalued prices. With money, the situation is different. It is possible to divide the dough into smaller portions and isolate them as required. Therefore, people almost always get full value for their transactions.
The accidental form of value comes into play when the material used to design a specific product represents the value of the good. For example, linen used to make a coat gives a representation of the value of the coat. A coat made from different materials would have a different value. The value represented by the two products is interdependent.
It is necessary to begin the form with those features because of the following factors: the way the work and the labor are organized, the skills of the human laborers, and the complexity of the tools used during the labor, and the complexity of the tools used during the work. A commodity’s value represents the time invested in the job to produce the merchandise. Therefore, human labor is what forms the value of a product, and it is measurable by considering the amount of time spent to produce a commodity. Hence it is necessary to begin the form with the features as the value of a product is determined by the time and human labor spent to produce the commodity.
According to Karl Max, the exchange value is not the same as the monetary price of a commodity. Exchange value is about the proportion in which one product is exchanged for other commodities. Exchange value can only correspond roughly to equilibrium prices, and this is the basis for the relationship between the price and exchange value. Once goods are about the exchange, their market value can be seen as entirely dependent on their use-value. Therefore, the value of a commodity is the common factor in the exchange-value. An increased emphasis on exchange-value as a source of valuation that allows them to transfer various goods to satisfy the specific criteria for usage results as individuals are progressively aligned explicitly with the market and directly with others. Exchange-value occurs as a consequence of perceived loss and expanded complexity of mutual relationships, which are substituted by a connection to an increasingly anonymous and impersonal exchange mediating sphere.
It is essential to understand that use-value or exchange-value as a whole can be derived from human labor, which resulted in the production of the commodity by taking labor as the value of the merchandise. Hence it is necessary to understand that exchange-value and use-value as forms of value equal to the product. This scenario can lead to one being concerned with the exchange-value of a commodity, which is usually equal to the time of the labor that was used to produce the product. Commodities can be exchanged by taking into consideration the actual amount of labor-time that was used to create the commodities. When labor-time is taken into account, the real value of the merchandise will be found. Otherwise, if labor-time is not considered, there will be a bias that will arise as one commodity with a lot of labor-time is exchanged for another product with a significantly lesser labor-time.
It is also essential to understand what happens in a community that practices capitalism. In such a case, it is necessary to understand that communities consider commodities as the object utility. Products have a market value, which is essential to have a successful trade, and this is the transfer of goods from a person selling the rights to the one buying it. Therefore, the continuous making of products not to satisfy use-value but rather to accumulate exchange goods is what defines capitalism.