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Chapter One: The Ring as Commodity
1. The Two factors of the Ring as Commodity: Use-Value
and Exchange-Value
(Or, How Isildur and the Fellowship Screwed you, the
Worker)
The wealth of societies in which the Dwarven mode of
production prevails appears as an 'immense collection
of Rings of Power'; the individual, or One, Ring appears
as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore
begins with the analysis of the One Ring as commodity.
The Ring is, first of all, an external object, a thing
which through its qualities of evil power, invisibility,
or longevity-extension satisfies human, hobbit, elven,
dwarvish, Orc, and others' needs of whatever kinds.
The nature of these needs, whether they arise, for example,
from the stomach (as in the case of Hobbits), or in
the imagination, makes no difference. Nor does it matter
here HOW the Ring satisfies one's need, whether directly
as a means of subsistence (ie., when bitten off of a
finger as an object of consumption), or indirectly as
a means of production (as of Uruk-hai).
Every useful thing, ie., mithril, pipeweed, etc., may
be looked at from the two points of view of quality
and quantity. Every useful thing is a whole composed
of many properties; it can therefore be useful in different
ways…
The usefulness of a Ring makes it a use-value. But this
usefulness does not dangle in mid air; it is conditioned
by the physical properties of the Ring, and has no existence
apart from the latter. It is therefore the physical
body of the Ring as commodity itself which is the use-value
or useful thing. In the case of the One Ring, that physical
existence is inextricable from the labor of the worker,
Sauron, which was utilized to create it; one might,
therefore, state that the essence of the Ring contains
a part of the essence of Sauron himself, and is indivisible
from him. In separating the worker (Sauron) from the
product of his labor (the One Ring), Isildur (the Feudal
Lord transitioning to Capitalist) had not only alienated
Sauron from his own labor-product, but also from the
means of production of a new Ring (ie., his corporeal
body, which would be necessary to fulfill any further
evil-creation acts). Moreover, the glorified accounts
of this episode perpetuated by Isildur's petit-bourgeois
vassals and the elven upper classes served to disguise
the true nature of his actions from the lower classes
for over two millennia. Yet Rings of Power are also
the material bearers of Exchange Value.
Exchange-value appears first of all as the quantitative
relation, the proportion, in which use values of one
kind (evil power, invisibility, etc.) exchange for use-values
of another kind (incorporeal immortality, unnatural
strength, and so on). This relation changes constantly
with time and place. Hence exchange-value appears to
be something accidental and purely relative…Let us examine
the matter more closely.
A given commodity, a Ring of Power, for example, is
exchanged in one place (The Shire) and in one time (near
the end of the Third Age), for one nice long retirement
in Rivendell and a trip to the West, or one nasty torturous
death at the hands of black riders, or an almost as
nasty, and much more lengthy and tiresome, journey to
the Crack of Doom and some rather bizarre companions.
In short, it is exchanged for other commodities in the
most diverse proportions. Therefore the Ring has many
exchange values instead of one. But X retirements, Y
nasty deaths, Z strange companions on weird trips, each
represent the exchange value of One Ring. Therefore
X retirements, Y nasty deaths, Z strange companions
on weird trips must, as exchange-values, be mutually
replaceable or of identical magnitude. It follows from
this that, firstly, the valid exchange-values of a particular
commodity express something equal, and secondly, it
is good to know before beginning to barter whether you
would prefer a vacation, a nasty death, or a long tormented
journey with some new friends. The difference, of course,
is in their use-values: as use-values, commodities (Rings,
vacations, nasty deaths, long trips) differ above all
in quality, while as exchange values they can only differ
in quantity (ie., ten thousands of nasty deaths for
one ring at Helm's deep versus the one of such proposed
in the Shire earlier).
If then we disregard the use-value of rings, only one
property remains, that of being properties of labour.
But even the product of labour has already been transformed
by this: with the disappearance of the useful character
of the products of labour, (ie., Rings of Power), the
useful character of the kinds of labour embodied in
them also disappear. One must remember that use-values
are only realized in use or in consumption. They constitute
the material content of wealth, whatever its social
form may be. Gandalf's insistence that no one of the
Fellowship use the Ring thus had the effect of alienating
all of the Middle Earth laborers from the use-value
of the One Ring. Boromir's desire to use the Ring was
a natural response to this inherent use-value, finally
realized in Gollum's terminal act of consumption of
the Ring as an edible (in which he himself, unfortunately,
was extinguished).
Since the amount of labour put into the production of
the Ring, both as material item, and as mythical gimmick,
far exceeded that of any other single commodity in the
entirety of Middle Earth, we must, whatever our political
bent, regard its destruction as one of the most heinous
crimes against the whole category of labourers in the
whole of the first Three Ages.