Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 09:57:21 -0500 (EST) From: bhandari-AT-phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Rakesh Bhandari) Subject: Re: Aesthetic Labour I hestitated to submit this last night because it is a rushed reply, and I have not made my point subtly or historically or succinctly! I apologize in advance. For Marx, value is determined by the *socially* necessary labor time required to *re-produce* a commodity; so 1. the actual labor time embodied directly and indirectly in a commodity is not its value a. otherwise more inefficient labor would produce more value and b. the introduction of more efficient techniques will tend to lower the unit commodity value of those produced through less efficient technique and thus 'embodying' more labor (so Marx does not hold the more embodied labor, the more value); and 2. Marx's object of investigation is capitalistically produced commodities, i.e., the world-historically unique vast accumulation of commodities produced by wage labor in a mechanized labor process, and Marx's theory of the search for relative surplus value through, e.g., mechanization and concentration, does not explain the dynamics of the production and price formation of art objects--they stand outside industrial production and the continuous revolutions in production technique by which unit values are continuously reduced and one commodity comes to replace another because of its objective comparative advantages in terms of social labor time. Such objective comparison is not possible with art works, which are the works of genius and incomparable talent and the demand for which is based on the whims of the rich; that is, objective comparison is impossible with art objects, their price is not determined in terms of value, i.e,. the social labor time required for their production or the social labor time their use will save. It may be however that the price of art works is indeed affected by the magnitude of spending on luxury goods as the amount of surplus value which is actually capitalized may vary over the business cycle; moreover, as the rate of profit in industrial production rises and falls in the course of accumulation, art objects can become a repository--like real estate or stocks--for speculative capital, which cannot find a profitable outlet in industry. Perhaps the price of art works also reflects a subjective evaluation of those things which stand outside rationalized capitalist production and commercial values. Thus as Paul Mattick Jr suggested years ago, it may become impossible to maintain a belief in the special status of art because of the fantastic sums of money made by speculating on it. Speculation in art can thus be undermined by a loss of belief in its "valued" status as a special object in the world of 'mere' commodities. So when Mikhail writes : >Postcript to La Distinction. If we use a marxian analogy for the >aesthetic value --then there is a question of labor. For Marx ( and as >far as i know for many modern economists) the value includes the amount >(time ) of labour. The more labour the more value. I am suggesting the analogy cannot be made, Marx had no intention of explaining the price of art objects by their value or their basis in social labor time--they have no such basis. Of course art objects have prices (based on the whims of the rich) but not values (based on the social labor required for the reproduction of commodities). There are many deeper arguments here. For example, Marx did not have a simple labor theory of value. Marx held that only ABSTRACT labor produced value--which raises the question of on the one hand why Marx maintained this to be so and on the other hand whether aesthetic labor is abstract labor. I am suggesting that aesthetic labor has no objective basis in social labor time. Being products of unique and incomparable talents, price of art objects cannot be determined by the social labor time required for its production; their price is determined (again) by the whims of the rich. Best, Rakesh ********************************************************************** Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
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