 All right. Good day. This is Professor Resnick again, and I want to introduce you all to Marx's famous book, Capital. So let me begin in the first volume of Capital, which I've asked you to read. Marx begins by discussing the relationship between different kinds of commodities. There he discusses, as you will read, one coat equals 20 yards of linen. Let me put that on the whiteboard here. One coat equals 20 yards of linen. There are three aspects of this relationship that I want to focus on following the logic of Marx. First, as a use value, and remember what a commodity is. It has a use value, it has an exchange value, that is, it's produced for exchange, and it's produced by concrete labor. As a use value, each of these commodities has a unique characteristic, a unique qualitative characteristic associated with it, which is of importance to the buyer. So the linen has, I don't know, linen is, I'm not sure exactly what that is, the coat has coatness. That's a relationship between the buyer and a commodity. So it's something unique, it's something that gives pleasure, satisfaction, whatever words you want, to the buyer of the commodity. In other words, there's a demand for that commodity. It has a use value to the buyer. Let me put another one on to make this clear. This is one that Marx uses, but let me put this on. 40,000 toothbrushes is equal to one Mercedes-Benz. A little bit more dramatic than Marx's example. So here, a Mercedes has the driving capacity of an automobile, a Mercedes to give people pleasure when they buy it. By the same logic, a toothbrush has toothbrush capacity, whatever that means, that gives pleasure, utility to the person who buys the toothbrush. Second, so each of these commodities has a use value and notice these use values are different, they're not the same. Second, as an exchange value, these different things, these different entities have a relationship with one another. They're exchanged in a certain proportion. And third, don't forget now, each of these is produced by concrete labor. That is, coat-making labor produces the unique and interesting characteristics of a coat. Those use values associated with a coat, by the same logic, the linen maker, produces the interesting and useful and unique characteristics of a linen, and by the same logic, we do it. The concrete labor of Mercedes-Benz labor produces the driving capacity of a car. The concrete labor of toothbrush labor produces the specific qualities of a toothbrush. So each commodity is a product of concrete labor, a specific kind of labor associated with that commodity that produces its unique and interesting features to the buyers of the commodity in society. Next, having defined this, Marx comes back and asks, why are these different things the same in a certain proportion? When you confront the world of exchange out there, economists, before-marks and after-marks, ask the question, a common question, why are these different things the same and why in this proportion? I mean, after all, you can't drive a toothbrush drive down the road and you can't brush your teeth with the Mercedes. So it's silly. So you have to ask then, why are these different things the same and why in some proportion? Well, Marx begins. He argues that what makes a coat equal to linen and what makes linen equal to a coat and what makes it, in my example, toothbrush equal to a Mercedes and what makes a Mercedes equal to a toothbrush can't be the unique characteristics of each of them. Why? Because they're unique. They're different. So you can't use that which is different as an argument for why these things are the same. So something is going on here to make them the same, but it's not the use value of each of them. Marx makes an argument that you can't see, you can't conceive of why these different things are the same by looking at the equation, by thinking about the equation itself. In other words, that which is making them the same is not present in this. It's missing. So Marx has to provide a theorization, an explanation of what is this missing property that makes these different things the same in some proportion, a theory of that missing property. He calls the missing property value. So he's presenting a theorization, a theory of value, that missing property which makes these different things the same in a certain proportion. This is a footnote to this. That's the Marxian theory of value. There are non-Marxian, or at least I only know one other, non-Marxian theory of value that makes these different things the same. That's called neoclassical economic theory, but that's a different course. We are staying with the Marxian theory of this missing property and he presents that in capital of volume one, and that's one of the reasons we're reading it. Okay, next step. In exchange, a seller of the commodity, the seller of the commodity, that person that's selling toothbrushes or selling Mercedes or selling coats or selling linen, is getting rid of the use value of the commodity. In fact, the seller of the commodity is alienating that use value, separating it to the buyer. The seller has no interest in the use value of the commodity. That's another way of discussing what production for exchange means. When General Motors Ford and so forth, when they produce cars for exchange, they're getting rid of the use value of that commodity as sellers and the use value is only of interest to the buyer because the buyer is buying it for use and getting its driving capacity, toothbrush capacity or whatever. So the moment of exchange is the same moment for any seller when there is a separation, a dichotomy between the use and exchange value of a commodity. Once again, the seller only has interest in that use value of the commodity insofar as it is of interest to the buyer. That's one of the reasons for advertising, to stimulate a use value. That is a reason for advertising on the part of the seller to stimulate use value so that the buyer will purchase that commodity. So the buyer, of course, is interested in the use value of the commodity because he or she is going to consume it for whatever pleasure that gives to the buyer. So the relationship of the buyer to the commodity is one of a private relationship whereas the relationship of the seller of commodity is a social relationship because he or she is only interested in the exchange value, which is a common to all commodities, and is alienating this private feature. The seller, as I said again, is not interested in the use value. Why belabor this? Well, this separation between the use and exchange value of the commodity turns out to be crucial to understand Marx's theory of the origins of surplus value or as we've done so far in the course, the origins of class exploitation. That's its importance. In capitalism, workers will sell something that they own, which is their labor power. So labor power, which means the capacity of a person to work, the capacity, the power of a person to work, to use up his or her muscle and brain tissue in the job, the capacity to sell that to a buyer, to a capitalist. Labor power is a commodity. When workers sell that commodity, following this logic now, they receive its value in exchange, the wage, but what they alienate, what they get rid of is the use value of that particular commodity. Just like if it were a person who's producing and selling an orange, the buyer of the orange gets its use value. Well, in a parallel way, the buyer of the commodity labor power, which is the capitalist, gets its use value. And here's the, I don't want to say trick, but here's this breakthrough of Marx. The use value of labor power, that singular commodity, the use value of labor power has the potential to create more value in production for the buyer than it costs the buyer in exchange in the market.