I’d really like to stop discussing price for the time being, we’re still just dealing with value.
The socially average amount of labour time it takes to make a commodity. For example, if the social average to create a watch is 2 hours then even if you spend 3 hours on a watch you can only trade it for 2 hours. If you’re mroe productive and spend 1 hour on a watch you can exchange it as 2 hours though.
Then you can define it that way, go write your manuscripts with that definition and we can compare chapter by chapter as we go through Capital.
Yes sorry, labour is considered as a social average. If the social average time to make a car is currently 60 hours, and tomorrow it is 1 hour, all cars made today will be forced to sell cheaper tomorrow because now cars can be made in 1 hour, so no one will pay for a 60 hour car.
That’s typically one of the many misunderstandings. We could say that the money-commodity, or money in general is crystallised human labour.
I’d like the specific context if you could refer me to a specific chapter or section.
I’d say it was determiend by supply and demand. I suppose you guys are going to make me explain total price = total value.
If a person “overpays,” that is, pays far more than the value of a commodity, they will then, obviously, have less money than normal to spend on other commodities, thus cutting back the market on other commodities by EXACTLY how much they overpaid. For everyone up, a down. Thus total price remains = to total value.
But labor can’t be defined in such a way. There is no average for certain labor. I could spend infinite hours and never produce a painting that picasso could produce in a few hours. How do we get an average of labor, when labor is specific to each laborer.
This would go under the special exceptions category, a Picasso painting doesn’t represent paintings as a whole. Picasso would be on the high-end of the painting commodities, whereas a pre-school art auction would be at the low-end of those commodities. We average those prices and such with an average labour time to determine that.
When we talk of Commodities, we are dealing with averages, when you pull in something that specific you’ve gone outside our range of consideration.
Ok what about laborers who are just more productive than others. Certain tomato pickers outproduce other tomato pickers, are we supposed to average the least marginal and most productive?
Won’t the most productive tomato picker provide his costumers with more value, than the least productive tomato picker.
Where you have better tomato pickers, you also have worse tomato pickers, the ups balance out with the downs to give us that average.
S/he’ll provide more use-value to be certain.
What a shock, when confronted with what Marx actually said, you guys have nothing to say. Namely because there are no strawmen here to tear down.
I honestly cant blame anyone for not wanting to asnwer this thread, I mean so many great thinkers have already refuted Marx to the point of nausea.
this is what im trying to get at:. exchange value and use-value are subjective when examined individually, yes?
Use-value is subjective yes. Exchange-value is not. Price does not necessarily = value on an individual level though, and may vary individually with supply and demand, or, as you like to say, subjectivity. But, on average, and considered as a whole, Price = Value. This is why you see roughly uniform prices when shopping amongst similar commodities in the store.
@Felipe
Right, refutations of this shit has been done to death.
And how can we make parameters that include a $60,000 pen, but disclude the JFK pen scenario. You are splitting hairs, that was an apt example.
Marx’s value theory is convoluted because he was trying to obfuscate the way that people looked at Ricardo, Smith, and Malthus. It was an attempt to turn people away from the bouregois power system.
I addressed this already I believe, a similar scenario. The answer lay in supply and demand.
Only if you fail to udnerstand what Marx is saying, which, if you read what Marx is saying instead of reading what you want him to say then it makes perfect sense.
Only if you fail to udnerstand what Marx is saying, which, if you read what Marx is saying instead of reading what you want him to say then it makes perfect sense.
Sounds like bullshit…
But labor can’t be defined in such a way. There is no average for certain labor. I could spend infinite hours and never produce a painting that picasso could produce in a few hours. How do we get an average of labor, when labor is specific to each laborer.
This would go under the special exceptions category, a Picasso painting doesn’t represent paintings as a whole. Picasso would be on the high-end of the painting commodities, whereas a pre-school art auction would be at the low-end of those commodities. We average those prices and such with an average labour time to determine that.
I would classify a picaso as a different commodity altogether. It may be a ‘painting’, but primarily it is a ‘painting by picaso’. Marx’s value theory really only applies to goods that are both reproducible and homogeneous.
Sounds like bullshit…
And arrogance.
This sounds more or less accurate, I have a comrade who is doing research on the similarities between Marx’s conception of money and Mises’s that should prove interesting.
This paper might be of interest; http://cje.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/1/87.abstract
This paper argues that, as far as theories of value and money are concerned, Marx and Menger have more in common than has been traditionally maintained. Each of them had his own abstract concept of value, distinct from labour or utility and prior to prices. Moreover, both proposed theories of value form and provided explanations of the origin of money. These concepts and theories can hardly be found in the works of Smith and Ricardo, nor in those of Jevons and Walras, because they were primarily concerned with the determination of exchange ratios. Furthermore, Marx and Menger become more sharply divided owing to their similarities. They shared many questions to which they offered opposite answers.
Care to say anything about the link?
I don’t have an account or anything so I can’t view the paper sorry.
I ttyped a bunch and when i hit post none of it posted and was all lost.
The Causal Connections Between Goods and
The Laws Governing Goods-Character read them
you dont need an account click on it nerd