The Emancipation of the Exchange Value from the Use Value: Reflections for a Theory of the Commodity in 'The Archades Project'

Authors

  • Ottmar John Director de la Comisión de Pastoral. Secretariado de la Conferencia Episcopal Alemana

Keywords:

W. Benjamin, commodity, use value, exchange value, capitalism, market, urban life, time, freedom, religion

Abstract

The concept of commodity is the central scheme of interpretation in Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project. This paper aims to develop and analyze this scheme in three steps: first, the concept of commodity will be explained by employing the differentiation between exchange value and use value, which is common in economic theories. In this context, it will also be pointed out that this scheme is valuable as a category for social sciences, and how it serves for describing new phenomena of modern forms of urban life. Secondly, the timestructure of the concept of commodity will be explored and interpreted in connection with Husserl’s theory of the consciousness of internal time. In the end, the interpretation of commodity will be related to the concept of freedom of market and then critically undermined from the vantage point of Kant’s notion of freedom.

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Walter Benjamin (1940-2010)

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Published

2016-02-14

How to Cite

John, O. (2016). The Emancipation of the Exchange Value from the Use Value: Reflections for a Theory of the Commodity in ’The Archades Project’. Constelaciones. Revista De Teoría Crítica, 2(2), 79–157. Retrieved from https://constelaciones-rtc.net/article/view/717

Issue

No. 2 (2010): Walter Benjamin (1940-2010)

Section

Essays

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