READING QUESTIONS 9/10/2013

Ricardo
I. What is the distinction between use value and exchange value?
II. Which of these two kinds of value is involved in the labor theory of value?
III. What does Ricardo think is the contradiction in Smith's treatment of value?
IV. Why does Ricardo say it's OK to say that the value of something depends on the number of laborhours put into making it, despite the fact that people have different levels of productivity (i.e., some
produce more in an hour than others).
V. What does Ricardo say is the relation between labor and capital as sources of value?
VI. Does Ricardo think labor is the only source of value?
Marx
Section 1, pp.302-308
1. Whats the distinction between use-value and exchange-value?
2. Whats a commodity? Hows it different from some random thing?
3. Does Marx think that value and exchange-value are the same thing?
4. According to Marx, is the value of a commodity the actual amount of labor put into it, or is it
something else (see p. 306)? If I slack off and work half as hard, does the product I create have twice the
value? If I make something by hand even though there are machines that make it with one-tenth the
human labor, is what I made worth ten times as much?
Section 2, pp. 308-312
1. Is labor the only source of use-value?
Section 3, pp. 312-319
Do read it, but dont worry if you dont get it. The reasoning is very muddled and the end-point is
somewhere you can get without nearly this much fuss.
Section 4, pp. 319-329
This is a very important section. Read it carefully; read the paragraph starting at the bottom of p. 320
and ending in the middle of p. 321 several times, and make sure that you know what he is saying.
1. Does Marx only think of a commodity as a thing that is bought and sold, or does he suggest another
way to think of commodities?
2. What is commodity fetishism?
3. Is there commodity fetishism in feudalism (p. 325)? In other non-capitalist economic systems?
Chapter IV pp. 329-336
1. What economic process does the cycle C-M-C correspond to? Can you think of an example?
2. What economic process does M-C-M correspond to?
3. Does Marx say what exactly it is that makes M potentially greater than M? How can two acts of
exchange of products of equal value (M-C and C-M) leave you with more money than you had originally?
4. Why does Marx say that, in the case of interest-bearing capital, the cycle M-C-M appears to be
abridged to M-M? What is weird or counterintuitive about M-M?