"The Grammar of Value"

murray_grammar.md

Excerpt from "The Mismeasure of Wealth", 2016

How is the Term ‘Value’ Used in Ordinary Language?

Let us do some analysis of ordinary language and try to spell out the grammar of the word ‘value’ as used in everyday talk about the kind of value that money measures. I will interpolate comments regarding Bailey’s views – which largely oppose ordinary language – as we go. In common usage we employ the word ‘value’ in phrases such as ‘the value of commodity a’ or in questions such as ‘has the value of commodity a gone up or down?’ or ‘Do commodities a and b have the same value?’ The ordinary usages of the term ‘value’ include the following features:

1. Value is public [Footnote: Prices, the necessary form of expression of value according to Marx, are public]. To talk about ‘value for me’ disregards the grammar of ‘value’ just as talk about ‘truth for me’ violates the ordinary grammar of ‘truth’. My allergy to dairy products does not mean cheese has no value. Whatever value is, it is for everyone.
2. As suggested by the phrase ‘the value of commodity a’, value belongs to the commodity; it is a property intrinsic to it.
3. As suggested by the phrase ‘the value of commodity a’, value is singular; at a given time, the commodity has a certain value – not countless values, as in Bailey’s talk of gold-value, corn-value, cloth-value, etc.
4. Furthermore, ‘the value of the commodity a’, assumes that value is meas- urable. Having a definite value at a given time requires having one socially valid measure of value. Though Bailey settles on money (gold) as the measure of value for practical considerations, since he does not prop- erly grasp the exclusivity of the money form, he is actually committed to the view that every commodity is a measure of value different from the rest.
5. When we inquire about the Gross Domestic Product and its changes, we assume that we can aggregate the values of commodities and that we can compare these aggregates over time. On Bailey’s approach we cannot say whether the value of the aggregate production is growing or not: (a) we cannot talk about the value of the aggregate in the first place and (b) even if we could measure aggregate value, we could not compare it from one moment to another.
6. Questions such as ‘Do commodities a and b have the same value?’ or ‘What is the value of your inventory?’ imply that value exists prior to the moment of exchange. Likewise, to the ordinary understanding, price setters fit the price to the value of the commodity; according to Bailey, there can be nothing to fit [Footnote: Compare Marx 1976a, p. 159.]. When people talk of ‘adding value’, they do not think that it is all added in the twinkling of an eye at the moment when the product is sold.
7. As indicated by the question ‘Has the value of commodity a gone up or down?’ the value of a commodity can be compared across time. This is true even if the question is qualified ‘Has the value of a in b gone up or down?’ If, as Bailey insists, it makes no sense to compare the value of a commodity across time, then this ordinary question makes no sense. We will also struggle to make sense of money as a means of payment or a store of value. To eliminate the comparison of value across time is to undo capital altogether: valorization offends Bailey’s grammar of value.
8. The question ‘Do commodities a and b have the same value?’ and the discourse of fair exchange or commutative justice – an exchange between two commodities is unjust when they are not of equal value – presuppose (a) that the value of one commodity can be compared with the value of another and (b) that two commodities could have the same value. If value simply is the exchange relation, as Bailey holds, then there is no room for unjust exchanges: if commodities a and b exchange for one another, there is only one relation, hence only one value. Bailey’s grammar of value precludes injustice; it allows no grammatical space for an exchange between commodities of unequal value.
9. The subjective element cannot be eliminated from value. If you take away all desire for a commodity, its value vanishes.
10. The value of one commodity can change without necessarily changing the value of every (or even any) other commodity. Since, for Bailey, value is not only relative but also only relative, a change in the value of one commodity forces a simultaneous and opposite change in the value of the commodity for which it is being exchanged.

Bailey’s thinking about value contravenes most of these features of the ordinary grammar of ‘value’, whereas Marx’s theory of value accommodates most of them.