#wertform

Given that the stereotypic use-value is an instrument, use-values are simultaneously semiotic processes (i.e., instruments, which consist of an artificed entity as their sign, a function as their object, and a mode of wielding as their interpretant) and the sign components of larger semiotic processes (i.e., commodities, which consist of a use-value as their sign, a value as their object, and an exchange-value as their interpretant). See Figure 6. However, use-values are not only instruments as so defined. Rather, any semiotic process (consisting of a sign-object-interpretant relation) can be a use-value so far as it serves as the sign-component of a commodity. In this way, a commodity is necessarily meta-semiotic: consisting of a larger semiotic process, each of whose components may be smaller semiotic processes. And, in this way, one may begin to investigate the commoditization of semiosis, or sign-object-interpretant relations more generally: giving off signs for others to interpret and interpreting signs that others have given off. [...]

As is well known, once commoditized, the economic value of these constituents may supersede their other meanings. In such cases, the infinity of meaningful qualities is reduced to different quantities of a single quality. For example, ‘functions’ and ‘purposes’ (qua objects of the embedded semiotic processes) are elided, while ‘value’ (qua object of embedding semiotic processes) is emphasized. Thus, while critical theorists from Aristotle to Marx will speak of the flattening effects of capital in terms of quality being reduced to quantity, it is much more precise to say that embedding semiotic processes turning on collateral relationality (i.e., use-values, values, and exchange-values) come to trump embedded semiotic processes turning on conditional relationality (i.e., signs, objects, and interpretants more generally). Proverbially, one knows the price of everything and the meaning of nothing.