13. Consumption, Need and Use-Value

I make this claim in spite of the fact that Rubin’s is one of only two works which Rosdolsky cites as exceptions to the rule that the role of use-value “has been very neglected in previous Marxist literature” (Rosdolsky 1980: 73).

It is not clear how much importance should be attached to the words “appears as” in the former quote, which are absent in the second. This may be of no significance, but the question arises more clearly from the contrast between two other passages which Rosdolsky cites from Grundrisse (without, apparently, noticing the distinction):

Her claim cannot easily be refuted since she gives no reference to substantiate it. The standard reference in this connection is Marx’s letter to Engels of August 24, 1867, “The best thing about my book”. But here he lists only two things: the two-fold character of labour and the treatment of surplus value independent of its special forms. A later letter to Engels (January 8, 1868) refers to “three brand new elements of the book”. Here he adds that “wages are presented as an irrational manifestation of a concealed relationship”, and phrases the point about labour power more generally: “If the commodity has a double character—the use-value and the exchange-value—then labour contained in the commodity must also be of double character”. It is true that Marx here makes reference to use-value; but it is hardly enough to justify Heller’s claim—if this quotation is indeed its basis.

It is perhaps significant that he also subtracts two of Heller’s types: the need of man for communism and the average needs for material goods in a society or in a class.

Marcuse was apparently too radical for Rosdolsky who claims that he “goes to the other extreme” (from Sweezy) (Rosdolsky 1980: 75, footnote).

An apparently similar point appears also in Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics (1980):

The man who goes to excess and is vulgar exceeds, … by spending beyond what is right. For on small objects of expenditure he spends much and displays a tasteless showiness. … And all such things he will do not for honour’s sake but to show off his wealth. (1122b)

The matter is not so simple, however, for Aristotle contrasts such a man with “the magnificent man”—the man who makes honourable expenditures “e.g. those connected with the gods—votive offerings, buildings and sacrifices” (1122b). Such expenditure may, paradoxically, be better understood not as consumption but as exchange. See Chap. 12.

Although there may be some who do. Marx refers to Liebig to offer a particularly graphic example: the “brutal South Americans” who force their workers to eat beans as well as bread, though they themselves would prefer bread alone, since this enables them to work harder (Marx 1954: 537).