Diamonds Are a Capitalist's Best Friends

To deepen our understanding, let us first examine what a commodity is and why it’s so special. A commodity is anything produced for exchange—by its properties it satisfies some type of human desire. The odd thing about a commodity is it leads a “double life” so to speak. It is a pr

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In this way, the purpose guiding labor is ‘objectified’—it goes into the object. “From the profit standpoint of business, the market ‘glut’ is a catastophe [that] must be disposed of Not by making surplus use-values freely avalible to people—heavens, no! Rather, by destroying them. Before work begins, the object already has a particular form derived from nature. Only when capitalism emerged did production for exchange become principal. The material objects in pre- and post-production differ. Much to its mortification agribusiness produced an “excess” of milk and pigs, causing prices to fall. Commodities are not made to be given away. Without exchange, there can be no use. “Business cares about product quality only form the standpoint of sales. “Materialy commodities may be totally dissimilar—but they do have one thing in common: all require human effort for their production or appropriation. Such properties claim our attention only in so far as they affect the utility of those commodities, make them use-values. This is a principle of private property.

If the basis for comparing commodities is the amount of labor required for each, the question of what kind of labor we are dealing with arises.

As use-values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange-values they are merely different quantities, and consecuently do not contain an atom of use-value.

Common topics in this essay:
Commodities Capitalists, , useful labor, abstract labour, useful labor treated, labour exchange, labor required, prices profits, labor treated, human labor, exchange commodities, quality-less labor, labor abstract,

Approximate Word count = 1226
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

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