Session 7 Discussion Topics

After describing how the "inherited evils oppress us" (296) through the times of production, Marx concludes, "We suffer not only from the living but from the dead. Le mort saisit le vif!" (296) The French translating: the dead man seize the living man. What does he mean by this and how is it related to the production. Does the proletariat represent the "dead" and the bourgeois represent the "living"? If so who/what are the evils?

Marx also speaks about how it is impossible to describe the class system as something definite for it is ever-changing. In relation to this, he later brings up values of commodities. The "use-value" and "exchange-value" differ as terms in relation to quality and quantity. The "use-value" of a commodity relates to the quality, but "exchange-value" only relates to quantity. Marx connected their relation by stating, "their exchange-value manifests itself as something totally independent of their use value." (305) Seeing these types of values as separate still doesn't change that the overall value of the commodity is measured by the amount of labor. Marx finalizes his ideas on commodities and says, "The value of a commodity, therefore, varies directly as the quantity, and inversely as the productiveness, of the labor incorporated in it." (307) His beliefs on value based dependently on the productiveness of laborers supports his claims stating the bourgeois relies on the proletariat to obtain profits.

Labor becomes defined as a social form and Marx shows the social connection it makes between the producers and the laborers. This social relation comes from the products made by the labor making them commodities. Marx believes these are social things because their "qualities are at the same time perceptible and imperceptible by the senses." (321) Marx believes that commodities are related socially but the laborers who make the commodities relate materialistically. Are the laborers suppressed to such an extent that they can no longer relate to others in social terms? Marx mentions, "the relations connecting the labor of one individual with that of the rest appear, not as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things." (321) Is he trying to say that the society has evolved to prioritize commodities over the laborers to the extent that laborers cannot even be described as connected socially?