claims not to believe in spooks

Uhh how is a painting useful, exactly?

Both paintings do have the same value: zerp, because art is not useful
They have differebt PRICES because PRICE isn't the same thing as value, marx elaborates on this

Zero*

Marx addresses this. Goods can fulfill people "fancies", which gives art a use value.

...

That's not an actual use
Being able to look at a piece of material colored different colors as opposed to looking at a blank wall both serve the same purpose, which is nothing
Marx wasn't correct about everything, and art is one of the things he was outright wrong about

This feels like a slippery slope to a "muh utility" argument - because unlike with a fungible commodity, the equivalent in commodities of a work of art is impossible to calculate due to the lack of socially necessary labor time.

To be fair, I will acknowledge that what a painting (or any product) is worth is obviously subjective, tastes change etc. My point is this: why SHOULD we even care how much someone worked to create something? A terrible product that nobody wants is not going to be given a high value by any society, regardless of how much labour went into creating it. If I’m misunderstanding anything here please explain it to me. I’m certainly willing to listen.

They are both worth one painting, namely itself.

You need to despook yourself. Nine thousand portraits of dead regents are actually just pieces of paper.

Explain how it isn't a use.
There's a qualitative difference between a blank wall and one with art on it.
I agree, but if you're going to say he's wrong on this topic you need to argue why you think that is.

The type of a good doesn't matter so much in determining it's SNLT, and SNLT is difficult to quantify anyways, so I'm not really convinced that this slope is slippery at all.

I think the key phrase here is "socially necessary" and it's the phrase you're missing.

Nobody cares if you spend 40 hours making a terrible chair in your garage if someone in a factory can construct a decent one in 10 minutes using machinery.

What matters here is the amount of "socially necessary" time, not the overall time.

For an easy example, compare an airplane to a loaf of bread. Regardless of how much machinery you use and how efficient your process is, an airplane will always take more labor time to build than it takes to bake a loaf of bread.

This means that the "value" of an airplane is higher than that of bread.

The value you appear to be assigning to the commodity is what Marxists typically refer to as the "exchange value" of that commodity, which is to say the ratio of equivalent commodities that potentially could be traded for a given commodity.

In our society, this is usually estimated in money (aka a chair costs $20) and is known as price.

This exchange value is anchored around the definition of value listed above (e.g. an airplane costs more than a loaf of bread) but also depends on fluctuations of supply and demand.

Apologies for the reddit spacing in advance

But doesn't a good need to be socially necessary in order to qualify as a commodity? Art is great, but it's not socially necessary.

OP was implying we think labor is objectively valuable, (mud pie retort), while also not realizing paintings aren't fungible, and honestly I'm not even sure if they can be considered a commodity. Their price is almost entirely a result of speculation, often based upon a name, which is effectively a monopoly, and LTV doesn't apply to monopolies.

Read that book. Things are useful if a person thinks they're useful, which has nothing to do with its exchange value. Also price is heavily dependent on something's exchange value.

I already told you to read that book. The LTV isn't about what people should care about, it's about why things are priced the way they are, which is from the amount of SNLT embedded in the commodity. It's called socially necessary precisely because people don't care how hard or long an individual worked, but only how hard and long it takes to produce a commodity on average.

You're spot on except you're conflating exchange value with price. Price fluctuations around supply, demand, and competition with the exchange value being its center (the equilibrium price), but the exchange value does not change.

That's not what socially necessary refers to, and no, a commodity is just a good produced for exchange.

A commodity is a good produced for exchange, and even if art is non-reproducible or is sometimes not produced specifically for the market it's still treated as a commodity because it often acts like one. You're right to point out that art is different from other commodities, but the LTV still applies to it.

the reply wasnt me dude, and theres nothing wrong with having fun

Sorry, but are you sure this is true?

Because it appears to me that this quote from Marx is relatively clear on this point: "The exchange value of a commodity estimated in money is called its price." Therefore if price can change, it is a reflection of exchange value changing. This makes intuitive sense to me because over-investment in one industry versus another can cause the proportion of commodities to another to change, thus changing that commodity's exchange value. Tbf, I haven't slogged through Capital yet, so I could be totally wrong

Furthermore, it appears as though the anchor point here for price is the "cost of production", not exchange value

Not all commodities are fungible.
Firstly, the LTV absolutely applies to monopolies, and secondly, price (i.e. exchange value) doesn't necessarily correspond to the value embodied in a commodity.
This is a terrible definition of utility
No it isn't. It's about how society values things in the domain of both production and exchange.

The exchange value can only change with a change in the SNLT to produce the commodity, prices change all the time through market forces. It is estimated in money by its price, but this estimation isn't precisely accurate.

AFAIK, cost of production is synonymous with SNLT and as such exchange value. Notice how he says "if the ebbs and flows of the industry are reckoned up together, the commodities will be exchanged in accordance with their cost of production"

If they're not fungible then you can't say two commodities have the same exchange value, precisely because they can't be exchanged for each other.
How so?
Price is not exchange value, value is exchange value.
Are you saying use value is objective and not subjective?
I'm talking about in relation to OPs question in that it explains why things are priced the way they are, not necessarily completely concerned with.

I'm the guy you're responding to in the first two sentences. Isn't SNLT = value, not exchange-value? Isn't exchange value of a commodity is defined by "the proportion in which other commodities will be given in exchange for it?" This doesn't seem equivalent to SNLT. Sorry for being such an autist, but I want to make sure I have all the vocab/concepts right before I dive into Capital

I've heard value is distinct from exchange value and use value, while also at times being synonymous with exchange value, so I'm not sure about what exactly value is.
It is, and that's decided by the SNLT of the commodity. Two commodities with the same SNLT will have the same exchange value, but not necessarily the same price.
That's okay bb

Value =/= Exchange value
If you want to get a better understanding of the concept, imagine "value" as energy.

Sage because you clearly don't even have an elementary understanding of Marxism, and probably didn't even read the wikipedia article.
Also read up about socially necessary labor time.

Exchange value doesn't require goods to be fungible. The exchange value of commodities measured in terms of other goods is the basis for barter, not capitalism. This is basic shit, come the fuck on.
How doesn't it? Monopolies produce commodities which they sell in the market and those goods require labor to make, which means the LTV applies.
That's just false. Price is exchange value measured in terms of money.
Use value isn't subjective, it's relative. The use-value of a good is measured according to the physical characteristics of a good relative to other goods. It is socially determined to an extent, but to claim that it's subjective is absurdly reductive.
And your answer was wrong.

It's obviously not the basis for capitalism, but the fact is that we use money as a useful and convenient proxy for commodities measured in other goods because we can't observe SNLT directly. Is this false? Thus, exchange value requires fungibility into money, if nothing else.

You clearly don't know what "fungability" means, brainlet. If a commodity is 'fungible' it's units are interchangeable, the idea of a commodity that is fungible into a different kind of commodity is contradictory and incoherent.

Yep! It looks like you're correct on the definition of fungibility. I think the misunderstanding may have stemmed from the original poster stating that "LTV applies to fungible commodities" which is a patently untrue statement because LTV applies to all commodities by definition.

Perhaps instead of fungible he meant those that are freely produced as opposed to limited by intellectual property?

Well intellectual property is a form of rent, so even that's covered under the LTV, so I don't really know what they meant tbqh

What do you think exchange value is? Under equilibrium price two commodities with the same exchange value should exchange 1:1. Historically commodities were priced in the intermediary commodity of gold or silver. If a commodity isn't fungible then you could make two of the same commodity but both have a different value.
No, price is an estimation, it is not equivalent to.
So you're saying LTV is incapable of explaining prices?

I was originally referring to commodities like paintings that aren't fungible with each other. I accidentally implied separate commodities in my reply to you.

Your premises here are flawed. If a commodity isn't fungible it makes no sense to claim that it's the "same commodity" as something else.
I never said that price was equivalent to exchange value.
No, that's not what I said at all. No idea where you're pulling this from.
That doesn't really matter since you're still wrong even if you did misspeak.

That's true, but in that case a solitary commodity is effectively a monopoly, whose price can't be explained by its exchange value.
You said "price (i.e. exchange value)" and "Price is exchange value measured in terms of money", which implies some kind of 1:1 correspondence.
Then why are you saying my answer is wrong?

What the fuck do you even think a monopoly is?
No it doesn't, you're just reading that into my posts. The phrase "measured in" doesn't imply an infallible ability to measure something's exchange value.
Because there's plenty of things you've said that have been wrong. Being right on a couple things doesn't make you not wrong.

A market or commodity that a single actor has control over, this allows them to charge prices irrelevant of the commodity's exchange value.
You could've at least remembered what you thought I wrote in my post was wrong instead of posting this lazy half-assed reply.

A monopoly is a market in which a single person/enterprise is the only supplier of a commodity. A person being the only producer of their own art doesn't make them a monopoly. That's beyond absurd.
Ok fine, I'll make a list of wrong shit you've said:

Such a product is not going to be given any value at all, for value is a feature of trade and your product won't be traded.

Because a producer who spent less time making the product you're after will be willing to sell it cheaper than his competitors.

That's not what "socially necessary" refers to.

...

Marxists are wrong about value, value is subjective :
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value

Are you going to make me blow STV out of the water again?

value is objective, it's price that's subjective, brainlet.

Value is social. You are in no position to call anyone else a brainlet.

So what's the evidence for value fluctuating around socially necessary labour time and (in a perfectly operating market) isn't just a result of the relative ratios of supply and demand between different commodities?