From: Anders Ekeland (anders.ekeland@ONLINE.NO)
Date: Sun Sep 02 2007 - 02:24:05 EDT
I thought that Marx' theory of value, that is the theory of all the transformations needed and or possible between physical hours worked and prices in the market place did not primarily apply to non-reproducibles. Or to put it another way, that a Picasso painting would be an extreme case in the "transformation problem", i.e how the total value produced is distributed over the "product space". The approach would then be that: a) The rich pay for Picasso from their profits (surplus value) b) That the mechanisms governing the prices of Picasso (and other collectors objects) are special, are very different from routinized production. There are more interesting examples of the same type of non-reproducibles, for example the same house on the sunny and the shadowy side of the valley, same type of cottage with and without direct access to the shore etc. In such cases there will be a systematic difference in price and number of hours embodied (being the same), that is house A (sunny) will have a markedly higher price than house B (on the shadowy side). But if I do remember correctly such phenomena are defined out of Capital, not out of Marxian Economic theory, but they did not get extensive treatment in Capital or TSV. It is a long time since I have read it now, but Roman Rosdolsky's: DER GEBRAUCHSWERT BEI KARL MARX. EINE KRITIK DER BISHERIGEN MARX-INTERPRETATION Kyklos 12 (1), 1959, p. 27–56. I found very interesting and it formed my view on these matters. Regards Anders
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sun Sep 30 2007 - 00:00:04 EDT