Exchange value

As exchange value refers to in the economy, the ratio in which two commodities are exchanged in markets against each other. A table for example, has an exchange value of two pairs of shoes, if it can be exchanged for two pairs of shoes. The exchange values ​​lie based on the so-called values ​​of commodities.

According to the labor theory of value, the value of a commodity is determined by the labor-time necessary to obtain such goods, which is not the individual labor time of each worker but to the socially necessary average labor time.

Exchange value was originally a term of classical economics in the 18th and 19th century, this term is now used almost exclusively in Marxist economics.

Exchange value in Marxist theory

In accordance with the then classical economics Marx distinguishes between the use value and the " value " of a commodity. The value in use is the utility of a commodity, and therefore that it satisfies some need. The use value of a shirt is so, for example, is to protect against the cold. The value in use is linked with the substantive characteristics of the goods: size, material, weight, build quality, etc. The use value of a product is always the same, regardless of whether I use the product for myself or if I sell it, so it becomes a commodity. In addition to this tangible practical value still exists the economic category of " value ". Once products are exchanged, so be traded as a commodity, you need a scale ratio in which they are interchanged. Prefer example, Exchange shirts for bread, so I need to know how many shirts are in against how much bread. In accordance with the previously classical economics (eg Adam Smith, Ricardo ) Marx represents the labor theory of value, which results in the value of a commodity by the time devoted to their production work. The more labor-intensive product, the more value it has.

This " value " is not a property which belongs to the products of nature, like gravity, size, etc., but it is a goods awarded by the Company property. The " value" is thus required only in societies that are exchanged in the products as commodities. Companies, however, in which ( only ) produce individuals or groups for their own use, it may not matter if and what " value " have the stuff. You it just depends on the value in use. Since, according to Marx in a communist society no market exists, but the company produced a total for their own needs, in communism, the category " value " of no importance. "Value" is so - other than " use value " - only a historically valid category.

From this " value " as it were, of the substance can differ " exchange value ". Exchange value is the manifestation of value, his expression. Somehow, the value must be expressed yes. In a society based on the exchange of goods - which in perfection only in modern bourgeois society is the case - the value in practice must take the form of exchange value. We have now accustomed to express the exchange value of a commodity into money, for example, " 1 shirt is worth 10 Euros ." But as it ever comes to this expression in money? This examines Marx in the first chapter of the first volume of his work Das Kapital. This gives it lay claim to have been the first to be investigated at all the question, why is is the value of a commodity in the form of money.

Marx developed in Capital to explain this money form a gradation of different forms of value: a simple form of value ( commodity A is used as an equivalent amount of a commodity B ) to form a universal equivalent ( of money). Whether it is a purely logical sequence of the various forms of value, or whether it is (also ) is a historical narrative, in the sense that the simple form of value have had validity only in the former, simple exchange companies, is very controversial among Marx Artists.

It is in the category of exchange value by more than just the explanation of mere quantitative proportions: In the section on the so-called fetish character of the commodity in Marx's Capital is finally clear that the category of exchange-value has a qualitative aspect, a critique of the production form, will appear in the " people's social character of their own labor as an objective character of the products of labor themselves, as a social nature properties of these things " (Marx 23,86 ). The exchange value arises because the producers to exclude as private producers from each other's actually social products. People do not exchange their products because they are forced to because of the division of labor - that was the view of bourgeois economics. It is, according to Marx, the specifically bourgeois division of labor, which means that the products, which are products of a social work but, to be privatized with the adhesive on them price tag again a private form - just the value-form! - Get.