8. What Is Value? Marx’s Use of Analogy

In this chapter, I analyse the challenge that Marx faced—most notably in Chapter 1 of Capital Volume I—in seeking an appropriate way to explain the mysterious phenomenon of exchange-value: what does it mean that 1 quarter of corn = x cwt. iron? He considers analogies with geometry, and with chemistry, and suggests that value is like weight. None of these entirely satisfies him, but he does not consider analogy with language, which I suggest would be more apt, in view of the fact that value is a social rather than a natural or material phenomenon. Indeed, Marx referred more than once to language as the epitome of the social. For example: “For to stamp an object of utility as a value is much as much as social product as language”. One passage in the Grundrisse indicates that he considered, but rejected, adopting this analogy, but I suggest that he would have strengthened his argument if he had chosen otherwise.