A Useful Thing
I've been working steadily on the manuscript on digital commodities. It was far from obvious to me that travel would really be compatible with writing, but so far I've been pleasantly surprised. In spite of, or maybe because of, the vagaries of meals, laundry, shopping, taxis, water, heat, humidity, bugs and all the other unexpected tedium and adventure that travel brings, I have been writing steadily.
I've run afoul of one passage in Marx, though, that is troubling me. So I'm going to post the passage here along with some thoughts in the hopes that some kind readers may donate a comment or two to help nudge me along in the right direction.
The passage is from the end of the first section of Chapter One of Capital, Volume I where Marx writes:
A thing can be useful, and a product of human labour, without being a commodity. He who satisfies his own need with the product of his own labour admittedly creates use-values, but not commodities. In order to produce the latter, he must not only produce use-values, but use-values for others, social use-values (And not merely for others. The medieval peasant produced a corn-rent for the feudal lord and a corn-tithe for the priest; but neither the corn-rent nor the corn-tithe became commodities simply by being produced for others. In order to become a commodity, the product must be transferred to the other person, for whom it serves as a use-value, through the medium of exchange). (131)My aim is to write about the ways digital commodities (like an mp3 song for example) fail to fit easily within the boundaries of commodity production as they are usually drawn and then use this as a way to approach some of the recent haggling over things like digital copyright and online piracy. This passage seems directly relevant. Yet it also seems to run the danger of derailing the whole project by defining digital commodities as outside of the bounds of commodity production from the very outset. I would like a graceful way to discuss this bind.
What I think I need to say here, only in clear and persuasive language, is that: Digital commodities always run the risk of no longer being commodities because they always carry with them the possibility of changing hands in ways other than by exchange on the market. Digital commodities get spread by peer-to-peer networks, or emailed, downloaded, or given away freely online in any number of other ways. In each of these cases the digital commodity remains a useful product of human labor, but when spread outside of market exchange it no longer functions as a commodity. It no longer serves to accumulate surplus-value for capital.
The place where I balk is where I find myself writing that "digital commodities" cease to be "commodities." This seems unnecessarily ugly to me. Perhaps I'm just being too squeamish though. Marxian theory can surely accommodate yet one more awkward bit of prose. Or perhaps there's some other mistake I'm making here that I'm not seeing.
Part of the trouble I'm having may simply lie in the parenthetical. It was inserted by Engels later on and sometimes I find his helpful comments less than helpful. However, his addition is certainly right, so I really ought to be able to accommodate his feudalism example too.
Enough for now. Comments welcome.
I'm wondering whether the issue is that digital commodities cease to be commodities, or whether the issue is that this kind of commodity - if I'm understanding your argument - makes a particular potential, which is always immanent in commodities and which (I think) is actually being emphasised in the passage you quote - particularly visible and therefore perhaps more politically "accessible" to us than it might be in periods where other sorts of commodities dominate the consumer market?
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm after is something like: I take Marx to be talking (among many other things) about the way in which capitalist commodity production generates certain immanent potentials that - if we chose to develop those potentials more fully, rather than persisting with the sorts of potential we tend to develop in everyday practice now - could yield very different kinds of production, consumption - and collective life. One reason to emphasise that there can be use-values without commodity production, is precisely to draw attention to the fact that commodity production - which also necessarily involves the production of use-values - necessarily carries with it this constant nagging sense that production could be based on something other than exchange-value.
Digital commodities might make this nagging potential, nag a bit more "loudly", because it makes it a bit easier in everyday practice to develop alternative forms of production and distribution. Those potentials on some level may have been tacit in commodity production per se, but they might become more accessible in certain times, due to the concrete "material" qualities of the things produced, productive techniques, forms of distribution, etc.
In that sense, and if I'm understanding the thrust of your argument, the passage you're quoting would be (potentially) consonant with the line of argument, rather than posing a problem?
Apologies if I'm completely misunderstood...
Take care...
Thank you for this comment. It has been extremely helpful. It's always encouraging to be able to turn a problem around into an advantage.
ReplyDelete"I'm wondering whether the issue is that digital commodities cease to be commodities, or whether the issue is that this kind of commodity - if I'm understanding your argument - makes a particular potential, which is always immanent in commodities and which (I think) is actually being emphasised in the passage you quote - particularly visible and therefore perhaps more politically 'accessible' to us ..."
I like the notion of digital use-values highlighting and making more "accessible" other forms of non-commodity production and exchange. I also like emphasizing that digital commodities only make this potential -- that haunts all commodity production -- more visible. Since part of my project also seems to be to argue that digital commodity production is still akin to other forms of commodity production and so can still be understood using Marx's categories.
I will keep writing now.
This is interesting--the problem I read as you presenting is something like a presupposition that digital things are necessarily commodities, a presupposition that appears in the fact that you call them digital commodities, that's the name for them from the outset. In my stuff, I've looked at that problem in terms of a change in communication from message to contribution where the contribution would be the commodity or exchange form that a message takes in communicative capitalism. So, exchange value overtakes use value although use value can still be present. This makes me think that you are almost better off referring to digital things and the ways they can be captured or are produced as already captured (digital footprints or updates on facebook, for example).
ReplyDeletehi Lump,
ReplyDeleteI'm late to the party here, I hope you don't mind.
You write "Digital commodities always run the risk of no longer being commodities because they always carry with them the possibility of changing hands in ways other than by exchange on the market." It seems to me this is the case for all commodities.
I wonder if it might be helpful to reframe the discussion from objects - digital commodities - to practices - unauthorized production/reproduction of digital use values.
I think NP implies this, in talking about commodity production rather than commodities, and that digital commodity production exhibit possibilities within commodity production. The point about these being issues within capitalist society rather than just digital capitalism made me think that it might be fruitful to compare the issues you're interested in around digital commodities to other analogous activities. I tried to do this a while back in a post comparing coin clipping to filesharing, I don't know if that'd be useful to you but just in case, it's here -
http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/01/09/is-the-parallel-between-coining-and-filesharing/
take care,
Nate