Common Value (commensurability) in Marx, Seen Through Dewey

There is a fruitful analysis to be done by applying the Dewey terminology of "instrumental" and "final" ends in 'Experience and Nature', to Marx' concepts of "use value" and "exchange value". The notion of relative value in Marx can easily be seen within the spectrum provided by the two Dewey terms. Because of this, the extention of the position of "relativity" to "incommensurability of values" in 'The Fragility of Goodness' is plainly ridiculous.

Marx says in 'Capital' that the exchange of commodities magically transforms the "social relation between men" into the "relation between things". This is possible only because, as a biological creature that "needs", man is also a thing. Because of this, and because the state of ourselves is that of same biological things, commodities can be made equivalent in value through the mechanism of money. It is only because of this common state that commodities can be priced, and because as "things", commodities are "things of need" where price reflects both the relation of things to the spectrum of biological need, and also the "social relation among men"- the social order.

A commodity is a form of embodied labor because the action of labor transforms the material into a "thing of desire", useful- in Dewey's language- as an effect. It is in this way that Marx' analysis of embodied labor in 'Capital' already expressed an embodied realism.

"Use value" as depicted in 'Capital' is thus confined within the common human spectrum of need, and although individual choice varies from person to person, and in this way value is therefore "relative", aggregate patterns of these choices have been established in the distribution of dollar spending and don't fluctuate significantly over time.

There are differences between income class, and priority to utilize resources to control and benefit from the process of exchange, but there exists no innate difference that designates or distinguishes the winners of social contests as being of a different species that justifies the degradation of the common person to the status of subhuman. This distinction is false and contrived.