Can someone please help me understand how the decreasing price of second-hand items fits in to Marx's theory of value? Do these items decrease in value according to Marx? My first thought would be to say 'no', but how does that relate to their price?
Finally, if they do not change in value, of what use is the theory of value? Thank you for putting up with my stupidity.
Well, for one, even though the absolute value of the commodities does not change, the socially necessary labor time to produce them may change. As in, assuming that they haven't suffered much wear and tear, a product with similar qualities could be produced today with less labor than it took to produce in the past.
Secondly, depending on the item, the wear and tear on it may depreciate its value. For instance, Marx uses the example of machinery depreciating in value as it ages, even if no new innovations in the field have been achieved, because its slowly reaching the point at which it will break (the labor embodied in it has been 'expended') or it must be repaired (new labor must be injected for the machine to continue to function).
And, thirdly, supply and demand influence prices. If similar or higher quality products enter the market for the same or lower prices, this will cause the price of an already existing commodity, be it of a similar or inferior quality to a new one, to depreciate.
"price" is not the same thing as "value". marx starts by defining "value" as "the labor time embodied in the commodity", and from there draws conclusions about value, more or less. marx ultimately is always directly talking about crystalized labor time when he talks about value; calling it "value" is just a name for it.
I hope you don't mind me asking, but what use is value to economics, if it is separate from price?
It isn't; it's of value to the working class and the communist movement. This is because economics is a false and myopic form of thought. Marx's oeuvre in Capital (subtitled, A Critique of Political Economy) is a rebuttal of this form thought and attempts to "economize" anti-capitalist thinking.
Different values determine the exchange values of commodities, ie. how X bread for Y eggs, Y eggs for Z sugar, Z sugar for X bread.
The exchange ratio of a commodity to mony is then the price. So value is more general than just price.
that's fine to say, but it seems to me that Marx is putting forward a [political] economic thesis, at least from reading some of the first chapter. Isn't the LTV used to demonstrate that workers are being exploited, in the economic sense?
but almost nobody uses barter to trade in modern economies, I think anyway. Price would seem to be much more relevant than value, and price isn't particular either. Marx had to explicitly exclude things like land from his theory because it's not a product of labour, but at the same time he's saying that it has no value. If Marx is talking about the value of commodities, why does he go out of that scope and say that land has no value, when he defines value in the context of commodities? it seems tautological
that's all price is though. we can see through price equivalencies in the exchange value of commodities.
Presumably as an example or as a clarifying point.
you know perfectly well that OP means "economics" in a broader sense than how you're using it
am - I can't really give you a good answer there, because I'm only about two and a half chapters into Capital so far. But my impression from hearing others talk is simply that he argues that "value" in his sense is responsible for certain phenomena or has certain significance, beyond simply being an important factor in the determination of price. I don't yet know much about what specific conclusions he draws as to value's role.
kek, I haven't reached chap 2 yet, but I'll keep reading and see if there's any clarification
thanks
If you want the contemporary definition;
Value is how much something is worth to you personally
Price is simply how much a seller is willing to exchange for it
In terms of second hand items, the majority of people put a lot of value in brand new cars, which is why it's so hard to find someone willing to pay more than half of the list price for a car you bought yesterday.
I'm also not that far into Capital, but from what I understand and from my preliminary readings Marx seems to see value as doing a few important things.
For one, value is what makes commodities commensurable, and thus exchangeable. It is their quality of each being congealed abstract human labour which makes them equivalent (in certain proportions). Basically, since these things (commodities) when taken as use-values are qualitatively different from one another, the only way they could be exchangeable is if they had some common element which makes them in some sense the same. This is where value comes in. In that sense, each commodity, despite being qualitatively different from each other in use-value, are only quantitatively different in value (more or less labour is in them), thus qualitatively (as values) they are all identical (and thus exchangeable).
The other thing that it seems values do is to determine the fixed point around which fluctuations in price revolve. So the price of grain can go up or go down, but the rotations centre around its value (I got this point from Value, Price, and Profit so I don't know if it's something Marx keeps in Capital, I haven't noticed it directly yet if so).
Depends what "second hand" really means. Is it a piece of clothing that looks basically the same as when created, although worn a few times, or is it a tool that lost functionality through intensive use, or a CD that got scratched beyond use…?
Also, some items increase price with time: wines, violins, collectibles, regardless of how many owned and/or used them.
This is not what Marx means by value.
Well, the market organizes labor in such a way that it produces what is useful to people - this is the relation between use-value and the phenomenon of socially necessary labor time.
Can someone tell me if I'm misunderstanding this?
I know, just wanted to clarify with multiple definitions of the same word flying around.
cheers fam, i haven't read VPP yet so I'll check that out too
Still going through Marx's work myself, but I probably have a better grasp of capitalist principles if that's what you're asking about.
I don't see how what you state even describes a relation. Commodities are use-values. But the market does not organize production in such a way as to maximize the quantity of use-values, nor does it organize to maximize the overall usefulness of its products. The market organizes production so as to maximize profit. The rate of profit in any particular industry at any particular time is dependent on the socially necessary labor time expended in its operation; this is what determines the instantaneous organization of production. It is the differences in the rate of profit between producers within the same industry and between different industries that drives changes in the organization of production.
If similar or higher quality products do not enter the market and demand increases, then the price of the product will increase. Additionally, collectibles take on an entirely different character as collectibles than they would as commodities of precisely the same use-value without that distinction.