me:
Used or old garments may regain use-value in that way [due to changes in style].
This would lead to a rise it the price of the garments, too.
But Marx's law of value only applies to newly-produced commodities, so used
or new products wouldn't have a value, even though they have a price. Of
course, if old or used products rise in price, that would create the
incentive for capitalists to produce similar products,which would have
value.
Charles Brown wrote:
... what about the value added being "used" up over a longer period of
time than immediately upon first purchase, or some such ? Like means of
production, a factory machine, is amortized over a period of time. Maybe the
used garment's value wasn't completely used up by the first user ?
As a product such as clothing is used (worn, washed, ironed, etc.),
its use-value typically declines due to depreciation (ignoring style
changes of the sort mentioned above). Thus, its market-price would
decline. Assuming that the technical conditions of the producing a
similar new product is average for society, this would be similar to
the value.
I think Michael Perelman derives a problem with Marx's idea of a part of the
means of production adding its value over a period of time to the products
it contributes in making.
Marx thought of fixed capital as having its value transferred to new
products as it depreciates. This doesn't makes much sense to me (for
the kind of reason that MP talks about). I think it's best to think of
the law of value as applying only to new production (to value-added,
i.e., the value of a product minus the value of the raw materials and
intermediate products that were transformed by labor in making it).
I'm willing to be convinced otherwise.
--
Jim Devine / "The decadent international but individualistic
capitalism in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war is
not a success. It is not intelligent. It is not beautiful. It is not
just. It is not virtuous. And it doesn't deliver the goods." -- John
Maynard Keynes.
