Shawn Miklaucic
Eng 395
Micro Essay #1
2/10/97
Sorry to be late in sending this to the listserv. I've had ample time to think about cars and use/exchange value over the weekend; particularly, how a car's crank shaft breaking can have an incredible impact on both, and how when one is stranded in a small town one would be happy with a Lexus, a Yugo, or whatever...
Anyway, I'd like to address Jason's continued discussion of theft in terms of value. He raises some interesting points and I thought it might be useful to address and add to some of them.
Why is it that question of how the value of a watch would change if it were stolen doesn't seem odd? In some ways, I don't think that the value of the watch does change when it is stolen. I can think of two reason for wanting a watch the first of which would be to tell time then second of which would be to indicate that your social position is one in which you have a need to know what time it is and do it with style.
I would argue that the second reason for wanting a watch that Jason suggests can, itself, be unpacked a little more to consider the effects of the "theft" of an item in one sense or another on its value. A Rolex or a Lexus denotes social status, but part and parcel of that status is the *ability* to pay much more for an item than it is necessarily "worth" in a capitalist wholesale/retail sense. A Rolex or a Lexus certainly has more
intrinsic value than a 3.99 Walmart watch or a Mazda respectively since they do have more labor put into them. The engine of a Lexus is more difficult to build, represents more hours of research and design, etc. The plastic Walmart watch is basically made of materials that are simply easier to manufacture/acquire than the Rolex. The *difference* in prices, however, reflect the extent to which people who buy Rolex watches and Lexus cars are willing to overpay for social status. In buying a Rolex, one isn't simply putting on a sign that says "high social status." One is, rather, making a host of complex statements about how one spends one's money and what one thinks is worth buying. The extra power and nicer seats in a Lexus, it's extra safety features and power windows, etc., are all actual physical attributes of the car that make it "better" than the Mazda in important ways, but the $40,000 extra one is paying for those niceties is grossly overinflated in terms of representing the labor power they
represent. Rather, makers of Lexus' and Rolex watches realize that the number of people they will be selling to is not large in relation to the market for 3.99 watches and Mazdas. To make as much profit as possible, they need to fetishize the Lexus in such a way that those with $50,000 available will think it "worth it" to pay the extra money. Part of what makes it worth it is that others know it is worth it: i.e., others see that
you bought a Lexus and thus know you have enough money to not care that you
are grossly overpaying even in capitalistic terms.
This brings me back to theft. A stolen Lexus, if no one knows it is stolen *and* if you have the other outwards signs of wealth to make it believable that you could afford it, is thus commensurable in value as a sign of social position and conspicuous consumption. If we see an African-American teenager driving a Lexus, however, we are much more likely to assume either that it is stolen or that it is the product of drug money, etc. Fetishism thus supports itself in this way because to gain the benefits of
conspicuous consumption one need constantly pay more and more to maintain
appearances. Any lapse destroys the effect. It also takes away the representative power of a gift if we find out it is stolen. Maybe the person whole steals a watch as a gift spent hours casing out the store, choosing just the right watch, and also risked jail to steal it. But despite all this, the watch's power as a repository of x hours of work on that person's part as translated through the purchase price is lost. The watch may, therefore, still have sentimental value in some sense but does lose its representative value to its recipient if the circumstances of its acquisition become apparent.
[Where does this leave us with the larger issue of capitalism in general as "theft" is not clear to me at present. In some sense, the fetishized "sentimental" value remains the same if the item is stolen or not, I guess, but I haven't thought this through...]
I think we *are* as a culture much more aware of labor value than I did previously, but in very warped ways. We discussed diamonds in class last week, and I thought it interesting that the going "wisdom" has it that a man should spend two months salary on the diamond engagement ring he buys his fiancee. The more ostentatious the ring, the more the couple can outwardly affirm the man's ability to make money in a surprisingly quantitative way.
A wealthy executive begins to equate time and money in terms of her or his ability to accumulate. We asked in class if it might not be better for a loved one to spend x number of hours making a gift with her or his own hands instead of simply going out and buying it. This may be true in some cases, but the more money one earns per hour, the less likely this is the be the case if we buy into the *time is money* concept. If I buy my wife a $300 watch on my current salary, I make the statement to her at least (and indirectly to others) that I am willing to give up a large percentage of my
monthly wages (which represents a large number of hours' labor) to show my affection for her. It becomes much easier to do this than it does for me to spend actual time making something for her, especially since what I have invested in as training involves skills in writing essays like this one and not making things with my hands. I could write my wife a paper on postmodernism, but the current ideology tells me that sucha a gift wouldn't be nearly as appropriate and/or useful in as many ways as it is to simply
teach my classes and then turn my wages into gifts that *represent* the time I could have spent writing her a paper.
This is garbled and unclear, I know, but I have not had the time to work it through properly. Hopefully, though, it will spur some more conversation.
Shawn
