What Should a “Commodity” Be?
—In Defense of Marx’s Definition of “Commodity”
“What has ‘consumption’ brought?”—If you were to let modern people discuss this topic, especially if you handed it to Chinese youth—the most enthusiastic group about the “market economy” in today’s world[①]—their general line of thought would probably be: consumption promotes exchange, exchange promotes production, production in turn promotes consumption, and so on; in short, consumption will ultimately bring “abundance”—the abundance of wealth, the abundance of life, and so forth. Thus we often hear slogans such as “stimulate consumption” and “boost domestic demand.” In any case, consumption is always a good thing; surplus generates consumption, consumption creates prosperity…
This is precisely the logic of capitalism—greed drives civilization, luxury brings affluence. These slogans have practically become established truths. It seems that these “laws” have long since been irrefutably confirmed by history—by the unprecedented prosperity of modern society. Is that really so?
Socialism does not necessarily have to reject the market economy, and Marx did not demand the negation of the “commodity”; he merely reminded people to be vigilant and reflective, so as to understand them clearly—what exactly is a “commodity”? What, after all, do consumption and the market mean?
As for the “commodity,” Marx’s definition is “a product of labor used for exchange, a unity of use value and value. It embodies certain social relations.” Value and use value are the basis of a commodity’s exchange value, and the ultimate source of value is the socially necessary labor time required to produce the commodity.
Even middle school students can easily see the “loopholes” in the above definition: for example, there are some commodities, such as an unusual stone picked up by the roadside, that may fetch an exorbitant price, yet the person who obtains it does not need to invest much labor time in it. Many commodities, including antiques and works of art, cannot have their value measured by labor time; moreover, so-called “service products” in the tertiary sector often do not fully take the form of tangible, physical objects, yet the tertiary sector is one of the most important components of the market.
And yet, did Marx really fail to notice special “commodities” such as strange stones and antiques? Why did he define “commodity” so narrowly?
Marx would never have been so shallow; his insistence on such a restricted definition of “commodity” was by no means without deeper intent.
Is a strange stone really capable of becoming a reasonable “commodity,” in the same way a sack of rice is? Is paying money to buy a strange stone really, like buying an object that serves a practical use, a form of “consumption”? If a strange stone really is “worth money” like ten thousand sacks of rice, then what is the reason for its value? The mere fact that “someone really would pay that much to buy it” is not enough to demonstrate its legitimacy as a commodity.
People do not always spend money in order to buy a commodity; for instance: someone donates money to school-age children who have lost access to education and receives a thank-you letter from them; or someone throws a pile of coins into the water just to “hear the clink”; or again, when playing a game, a child “buys” a villa drawn on a card with a virtual million… These acts of “exchange” probably do not deserve to be called “consumption,” do they?
Once we realize that “spending money” is not always equivalent to “consumption,” we may be able to reflect more calmly on those acts that are habitually, and without a second thought, deemed “consumption.” Just how much of what appears as “exchange value” is extra, irrational, or even mad and unreasonable?
Beyond the value of commodities, people also spend wealth far beyond a commodity’s reasonable value because of personal emotional factors and various environmental factors—enticement, fraud, and the like. This is not to say that all such extra spending is meaningless; donations made out of compassion, for example, are not meaningless. But such spending is after all extra—beyond the support of reasonable value—and this should not be forgotten.
However, with the development of capitalism, people did not heed Marx’s reminder; instead, they increasingly forgot the use value of commodities. What determines the price of a commodity is no longer its labor cost or use value—so what could it be? Jean Baudrillard proposed that “sign value” has replaced use value and exchange value, and that this “sign value” redefines commodities as symbols to be consumed and displayed.[②] This is an interesting formulation. “The signification of commodities and the commodification of signs” is precisely a characteristic of modern society.
In Capital, Marx describes this reversal in which exchange value acquires a more important status than use value: in the past, the purpose of production was merely the satisfaction of needs. Money was only an intermediary component. But now, realizing surplus value (profit) has become the purpose, and commodities have become the intermediary component for appraising money.[③]
Marx described this incomplete juridical society (Gesellschaft), controlled by exchange value, commodification, and abstract forces, as a “distorted, bewitched, topsy-turvy” society. “Marx’s object of criticism, of course, is not the commodity itself, not the commodity as the simple object of exchange necessary for the maintenance of social existence; what he criticizes is the fetishization of the commodity under capitalist production and exchange, … abstraction has seized power, and with it comes the danger that the essence of social reality will be obscured and that systems of domination will be deepened.”[④]
Money, as an abstraction, as a kind of sign, replaces concrete, real needs and becomes the purpose of production. This is not merely a change in market form, but also a transformation in the way people think—it leads people to convert all questions of quality and essence into questions of quantity, and to regard everything—including human beings—as commodities, as signs.
Simply put, people no longer measure price by value; instead, they measure value by price. In the end, a person’s own “value” can also only be measured by price—whether one is an entrepreneur or an athlete, the single standard for reflecting how “successful” one’s life is is “net worth.”
Yet what people forget is this: money is an abstract sign, and as it increasingly becomes independent of real things, the boundary between the real and the illusory grows blurred.
Think back to that game in which one uses a virtual million to buy a villa on a sheet of paper—such a game can be designed to be extraordinarily complex: from playing house to Monopoly to the online games popular in recent years—people can earn virtual money through virtual work, then use virtual money to buy virtual commodities… In a virtual city designed entirely by the game developer, people can create virtual prosperity through virtual effort. People may discover that this virtual city is becoming more and more prosperous, that virtual GDP is rising year by year, that virtual commodities are becoming increasingly abundant and refined… but all of this is false; the only thing that is real is merely the set of “game rules” designed by the game company.
How far, then, is such a virtual society from the real society in which we live? If the price of commodities can be completely detached from the real labor they embody, if people’s demand for consumption can be completely independent of a commodity’s use value, then the price of commodities may come to be guided and even controlled by the “game rules” of the market economy. Modern producers not only have to produce commodities, but also have to “produce” people’s “demand” for commodities. Manufacturers induce the public through advertisements; through a continual stream of novel, “seemingly very good” products, they keep stimulating demand. And the “value” of a commodity—that is, its price—is then determined entirely by the “demand” that has been induced in people. Thus, if a factory produces a batch of commodities and they can be sold for one hundred million yuan, that means the total output, the total wealth of society, has grown by that much, even if the batch of products is entirely illusory…
And what is worse, the public will become immersed in the pleasure of demands being continually satisfied, intoxicated by the appearance of prosperity in this society, and will be indifferent to those real problems that have never been solved. And that pleasure, just like what is obtained from a virtual video game, is always empty and illusory.
I am not trying to deny the positive significance of measures such as “stimulating consumption” and “boosting domestic demand,” nor am I advocating resistance to or rejection of commodification or signification. Just as games and entertainment are also indispensable to the life of a healthy person, and games can indeed greatly promote real production and the enrichment of creativity (for example, the prosperity of video games is precisely one of the important forces promoting the development of the microcomputer industry and technology). However, even the most avid game fan should always remain clear-eyed: which side is the illusory world of the game, and which side is the real world of life.
October 11, 2006
[①]According to a sampling survey conducted between June and August 2005 across more than 20 countries, 74% of Chinese respondents agreed that “the market economy is the best and most promising economic system in the world.” This ranked first. Other figures included the Philippines at 73%, the United States at 71%, India at 70%, Spain at 63%, Italy at 59%, France at 36%, and so on. See the February 6, 2006 issue of Reference News.
[②]See [U.S.] Douglas Kellner, ed., Baudrillard: A Critical Reader, trans. Chen Weizhen, Chen Mingda, and Wang Feng, proofread by Li Pingwu, Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 2005; [French] Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society, trans. Liu Chengfu and Quan Zhigang, 2nd ed., Nanjing University Press, 2006
[③]Baudrillard: A Critical Reader, p. 60
[④]Ibid., p. 62
Latest Comments
- Gu
2006-10-11 11:41:18
This is a small assigned paper for the Marxist political economy component of the school’s public political theory course, with the topic “What consumption brings,” and a required length of 1,000 characters.
Even though it is a political theory class paper, I don’t plan to muddle through; I’m not writing just to satisfy a course requirement. More importantly, every opportunity to write an essay can spur me to read various related books.
Besides the two books mentioned in the notes, other worthwhile references I consulted this time included Postmodern Turn, Television and Everyday Life, and The Society of the Spectacle.As for “modernity,” Marx was one of its earliest and most comprehensive critics. Even today, when modern and postmodern currents are layered one upon another, Marx’s insight remains the most powerful. And the so-called Western Marxists are the true inheritors of Marx’s critical spirit; as for the Eastern Marxists, they are instead constrained by westernized ways of thinking, using the logic of capitalism to interpret Marx’s philosophy and political economy.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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