A
Theory of Uniqueness Value
Sam Ghandchi
Iranscope@hotmail.com
Written: Nov 24, 2003
Republished: April 27, 2007
Preface
Recently I wrote
an article entitled Social
Justice and the Computer Revolution, which raised many questions
for the readers. For example, some asked me that with the fundamental
change of social justice in the economic arena, which I had discussed,
what solution is there for social justice in the post-industrial
economies. Others asked me about what changes in the tax system
would be necessary. I tried to answer the questions. But the readers
can best answer the questions for their own particular area of interest
of economics if they study the original economics paper of mine,
which is below. My article about social justice was a part of this
paper, which is presented below.
In 1989, Daniel
Bell in a letter,
sent me excellent feedback about this paper and the topic of value
in the post-industrial societies, and suggested that I use the Wassily
Leontief 's input-output model to transform *uniqueness values*,
that I had proposed in this paper, to market values in the total
world economy in a process of Walrasian Tatonnement.
Unfortunately
since then, I have not had found the opportunity to spend more time
on the model that I have presented here. I hope to test this theory
using Leontief's input-output model to prove or disprove it.
In fact, the
existence of organized futures commodity markets such as Chicago
Board of Trade has created a good environment to test the theory.
Of course Daniel Bell had correctly reminded me by homogenizing
prices, including labor, the mathematics gets simple. and that without
homogenizing prices, the number of nonlinear equations gets too
many and the calculation of transformation of uniqueness value to
market value with the state of the tools of mathematical economics
of late 1980's was seemed to be an impossible task.
Daniel bell
in the same letter gave an interesting example about the economic
value of Einstein's theories and his example was very well related
to the topic of this paper. Also he had written that he was working
on a book which would be the extension of his knowledge theory of
value which he had proposed in 1973, and it would be in response
to critics of his colleagues about the relation of his work and
tatonnement. but I have not seen him publishing the work and am
not sure if he ever continued the project or not.
In the same
place, Bell correctly mentioned that "Marx was quite aware
of the problem and in the Grundrisse, he assumed it would disappear
because scarcity would disappear and the question of valuing labor
would disappear." Of course these words of Marx are correct,
and I have even shown that years before Grundrisse, Marx had been
aware of it. But as I have shown in this paper, with the reduction
of the significance of labor time, the issue of creative activity
not only will not disappear but in the post-industrial societies
it will become the main issue of the reward of human activities.
It is interesting
that Willis
Harman, also in 1989, in a letter to me about this paper, emphasized that the labor theory of value
would no longer make sense in a high-technology age. And continued
that "if the whole value structure of society is shifting such
that more and more persons are going to be considering work as primarily
life fulfillment-rather than toil for wages so that one can seek
fulfillment after hours-then I'm not sure we will have quite the
same interest in quantifying the results of work. I am not sure
what that says about the desirability of having a two-dimensional
theory of value". I should say that he was right in noting
that defining value in its industrial form, meaning labor time,
loses its significance with the growth of post-industrial society,
and I have also emphasized that in this paper, but my endeavor in
defining the value of human creative activity does not mean the
value of work in its industrial form, and in fact in the post-industrial
societies, the importance of defining the value of human creative
activities, not only is not diminished, but as I will show it will
become more and more important.
Summary of Paper
In this article,
I am proposing the division of exchange value into two kinds.
The first kind is related to the human activity as work. It is determined
as in the classical theory of value by the average labor-time. The
other kind of value which is proposed in the article I call *uniqueness
value*, and is related to human activity as a free
creative activity. It is my claim that this "uniqueness
value" is determined by the best and not the average human
activity of the similar nature. Needless to say that both of these
"values" are "exchange" categories and are not
"use values." Moreover, I argue that the transformation
between these two kinds of value is the cause of the dilemma of
social justice in the dawning new civilizations. I show that the
increasing importance of the "uniqueness value" in the
contemporary economic relations has shifted the question of social
justice from a problem between conflicting social classes to one
within seemingly coherent social groups (classes). Therefore, to
work for social justice in the coming new civilizations demands
an "intra-class" approach. A few suggestions for such
a new approach are presented at the end of this article.
PART I - Marx's Theory of Exchange Value
In reviewing
Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy, I will show that Smith, Ricardo,
and Marx knew the limitations of their theory and could have gone
beyond it using the small yet growing category of products.
First, to reiterate
Marx's final formulation of his theory of value from the first volume
of Capital:
"The labor...that
forms the substance of value is homogeneous human labor, expenditure
of one uniform labor-power. The total labor power of society, which
is embodied in the sum total of the values of all commodities produced
by that society, counts here as one homogeneous mass of human labor-power,
composed though it be of innumerable individual units. Each of these
units is the same as any other, so far as it has the character of
the average labor-power of society, and takes effect as such;
that is, so far as it requires for producing a commodity, no more
time than is needed on an average, no more than is socially necessary.
The labor-time socially necessary is that required to produce an
article under the normal conditions of production, and with the
average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time"...."Simple
labor, it is true, varies in character in different countries...but
in a particular country it is given. Skilled labor counts only as
simple labor intensified." (my emphasis)
It is evident
that for Marx, the value of commodities is determined by the average
labor-power of society. In fact, all producers need to produce within
the range of the average and no drastic difference between the least
efficient and the most efficient can impose a continuous presence
in the conditions of general commodity production (what he called
capitalist production but is in fact true for industrial production
whether capitalist or socialist, and maybe the averaging mechanism
is even stronger under socialism.) In other words, if a type of
production is too inefficient, it will be dropped out and if it
is highly efficient, then other competitors necessarily catch up
quickly (the more advanced the industrialization, the quicker the
process of averaging). Thus, for industrial production, it is not
only averaging in theory, but the whole general process of production
itself that inclines towards the average in the real life.
Industrial production
as a whole, with its standardization of production and labor, makes
every process of production gravitate towards the average. The more
advanced the industrialization, the faster the gravitation. In fact
the consequences of a developing industrial society made averaging
a reality in most realms of life as well as in the theoretical schemes
of the last part of the nineteenth century. It came to be believed
that everything will become a commodity, even most human beings
themselves.
The averaging
phenomena was, on the positive side, responsible for the rise of
much of modern social science, such as economics and sociology;
on the negative side, it was a methodological shortcoming which
lost sight of realms of life that were not determined in this manner
and in which uniqueness counted more than averages.
Did the classical
economists know that labor-time value was not the only unit of economic
reality when they proposed this averaging theory? I think they did
and I would like to explore this different category of value, what
I will call "uniqueness value" in the remainder of this
paper.
PART II - Historical Notes On *Uniqueness
Value*
All three major
classical economists, Smith, Ricardo and Marx, were aware of the
limitation of their theoretical model. Marx quotes Ricardo in the
Poverty of Philosophy as follows:
"Possessing
utility commodities derive their exchangeable value from two sources:
from their scarcity, and from the quantity of labor required to
obtain them. There are some commodities, the value of which is determined
by their scarcity alone (my emphasis). No labor can increase the
quantity of such goods, and therefore their value cannot be lowered
by an increased supply. Some rare statues and pictures, scarce books...are
all of this description, their value...varies with the varying wealth
and inclination of those who are desirous to possess them."
(As I will show later, Marx did not believe that their "value"
varies, rather he said their "price" was a monopoly price.)
Ricardo did
not notice that what was true about rare works of sculpture was
also true for the musical works of his day and even the copyright
of his own book. The question that needed answering was: How do
these products become valuable or valueless without average out?
For if Ricardo
had noticed a wider range of products in this category and if he
had noted the growth of this type of products alongside the reduction
of the work-week, he would have grasped their significance for the
future economic reality. He preceded Marx in stating that "these
commodities, however, form a very small part of the mass of commodities
daily exchanged in the market." Although this statement was
true about the economic reality of his time, but the situation was
progressively changing.
Neither Smith,
Ricardo nor Marx could have accounted for the price of their own
work, that is the copyright of their books, on the basis of their
own criteria of value. Because philosophers of Greece and the early
modern scientists were not a large enough social group, their "products"
did not enter the market as a significant portion of the total social
product. But in the post-industrial society the volume of tool-like
human activity (work) drops and the free creative activity of human
beings keeps increasing. (Even though the increase is not in proportion
to the drop in work-time.*) The growth of this kind of human activity
in our times is the significant reason for our ease at recognizing
this category of products. Electronic media, for example, has contributed
to this growth by allowing a piece of music to be recognized as
a masterpiece (or a worthless patchwork) in a fraction of the time
it took some of the great composers such as Bach to be recognized.
The processes of elimination and rehabilitation have both been speeded
up enormously and proportionate to each other.
Historically,
Ricardo specifies the commodities he has in mind when proposing
the theory of value:
"In speaking
then of commodities, of their exchangeable value, and of the laws
which regulate their relative prices, we mean always such commodities
only as can be increased in quantity by the exertion of human industry,
and on the production of which competition operates without restraint."
(Ibid)
Thus, one restraint
is the impossibility of producing another Mona Lisa (i.e. uniqueness)
and the other one is monopolization of the market. The first restraint
was almost forgotten whereas the second one was recognized by some
Marxist economists like Hilferding.
Marx continues
with Ricardo's quotation of Adam Smith from the Wealth of Nations:
"That this
(i.e. labor time) is really the foundation of the exchangeable value
of all things, excepting those which cannot be increased by human
industry, is a doctrine of the utmost importance in political economy;
for from no source do so many errors, and so much difference of
opinion in that science proceed, as from the vague ideas which are
attached to the word value."
Marx quotes
Ricardo approvingly that there is no necessary connection between
price and value of those "rare" commodities. They both
did not believe that the value of such commodities could be determined
in a different way and still be exchangeable with other commodities.
These rare commodities exemplify what I am calling uniqueness value
produced from the free creative activity as differentiated from
the labor-time value produced from the tool-like activity.
As I will show
later from Capital Volume III, when Marx reviews the determination
of general price of production, he only uses the monopoly price
explanation when addressing these product.
Marx quotes
Ricardo as saying:
"Commodities
which are monopolized, either by an individual or by a company,
vary according to the law which Lord Lauderdale has laid down: they
fall in proportion as the sellers augment their quantity, and rise
in proportion to the eagerness of the buyers to purchase them; their
price has no necessary connection with their natural value: but
the prices of commodities, which are subject to competition, and
whose quantity may be increased in any moderate degree, will ultimately
depend, not on the state of demand and supply, but on the increased
or diminished cost of their production."
Both Marx
and Ricardo are, in fact, confusing the determination of these two
kinds of values with the correlation (transmutation) between the
two. I will demonstrate later that the price of those commodities
varies in relation to the uniqueness value just like the price of
other commodities varies around the labor-time value. What should
be accounted for by the eagerness of the purchasers, etc. is not
the relation of price to value but is the relation of labor-time
value to the uniqueness value. The two are incomparable, like apples
and oranges, but because of this, eagerness can determine the relationship.
It is like trading peace for war indemnities.
Marx had always
agreed with Smith and Ricardo in regard to the independence of the
price of such commodities to their value. He called this price the
monopoly price. Not only in the Poverty of Philosophy of 1857 but
even in the posthumous publication of Capital (Vol. 3) he repeats
the same view:
"When we
refer to a monopoly price, we mean in general a price determined
only by the purchasers' eagerness to buy and ability to pay, independent
of the price determined by the general price of production, as well
as by the value of the products. A vineyard producing wine of very
extraordinary quality which can be produced only in relatively small
quantities yields a monopoly price. The wine grower would realize
a considerable surplus profit from this monopoly price, whose
excess over the value of the product would be wholly determined
by the means and fondness of the discriminating wine-drinker..."
(my emphasis)
He goes on to
express the same view with regard to differential rent. Marx, therefore
invents the concept of surplus profit to avoid accepting *monopoly*
price as the expression of some kind of value (what I think is uniqueness
value).
I believe that
the reason for Smith, Ricardo and Marx's reluctance to accept two
different measures of value is the difficulty of explaining the
exchange between the two. They thought that if the two can be exchanged,
then it is not actually two measures but it is one measure in two
forms. And if they are really two measures of different kinds, then
exchange would be impossible, apples and oranges! In other words,
if the value of two kinds of commodities is determined in two substantially
different measures, how could they have something in common to make
them comparable (exchangeable).
When the measure
of value for standard products is labor-time and the measure of
value for unique commodities is creativity, the question may seem
like asking how labor-time can be traded with creativity. Labor-time
is the average labor power of society, a physical quantity, whereas
creativity is like a psychological/aesthetic quality.
What Marx reminds
us of in the first volume of Capital, when differentiating use value
and exchange value, is that we need to have something in common
to compare or exchange. Of course he is right about the differentiation
of use value and exchange value not because of incomparability but
because just usefulness nothing would gain an exchange value. Let
me continue the discussion of our topic about two kinds of exchange
values. Marx even quotes Aristotle's declaration that we need to
have something common to compare or exchange. Thus, he could not
accept two kinds of measures of exchange value without contradicting
himself. (It was logically an Aristotelian mistake for a Hegelian!)
But the reality is that such exchange happens as the exchange of
"incomparable" items.
When a piece
of music is accepted as valuable (based on a reason different from
labor-time), the decision to find an equivalent from labor-time
values (or their money equivalent) is made on a unique basis based
on eagerness and ability to pay. As stated before, it is just like
trading peace for war indemnities. One is a political entity whereas
the other is an economic calculation. The everyday exchange within
each of the two realms is completely different and has its own "laws",
but the exchange between the two is made on a unique basis (not
on the "average"). It is also like the difference between
Newton's acceptance of only one force, gravity, in contrast to Einstein's
acknowledgement of the four forces and the endeavor to unify them
without a mental pre-reduction of all of them to one. What the grand
unification theory might be like is left open at this point but
I believe the acknowledgment of the two kinds of value is inescapable.
In summary,
Marx and Ricardo's mistake was that they thought the "monopoly
price" was set according to the willingness of the parties
involved. They did not see the possibility that there could be two
kinds of value which could be transmuted by the final arbiter of
economic relations, i.e., the social decision or what they called
people's willingness, whether due to economic, psychological, aesthetic
reasons or just due to craziness as may be observed in the coming
and going of fads both in the capitalist and the socialist countries.
The mechanism of the transition from one kind of value to the other
may prove to be as difficult as the unification of the four forces
in modern quantum physics.
PART III - The Foundations of the Two Kinds
of Value
There are two
kinds of human activities (see Sam Ghandchi "Intelligent Tools:
The Cornerstone of a New Civilization"): The first kind is
tool-like activity which is standard and the other is free creative
activity which is unique. "(Hu)man was used as a tool whenever
his sense perceptions and locomotive abilities, language understanding,
and special skills were utilized as means of production (i.e. means
to an end). To the degree (hu)man is clipped of his versatility
and his freedom is limited in order to conform to the production
process, the more tool-like he becomes. In contrast, (hu)man remains
an end in himself and is not reduced to a special tool to the degree
versatility, knowledge, and sophistication prevail in his productive
activities."
On the one hand,
with advances in automation, creative products can be mass produced
very quickly. On the other hand, standardized production requires
less human work. In fact, what differentiates "work" from
other forms of human activity is not its being physical (versus
mental) or unskilled (versus skilled). Whether the human activity
is an expenditure of perception, locomotion, or language and special
skills as means of production or not, work must be defined on a
different basis.
What Marx calls
labor power is an inadequate term because it does not show the significance
of perception and language skills - Taylor's transformations can
be used for quantifying such abilities (See Braverman, Harry - Labor
& Monopoly Capital, 1976). Labor time, however, is meaningful
for work. But if the same activity, for example, physical activity
for pleasure rather than work, is done by an individual as a free
human activity, it is no longer work and cannot be evaluated by
labor-time even if its product enters the market in a future date
(like some works of art or music). Mostly work is paid in a short
time by the general equivalent (money), whereas free human activity
(most creative activities) may never be compensated in money. Thus,
what differentiates mental and physical or skilled and unskilled
labor does not differentiate work and free human activity.
The difference
between these two kinds of human activity was exemplified in slave
societies where, in practice, two kinds of human beings existed.
Slaves were doing tool-like activities and the free citizens were
mostly doing free human activities. A peasant spent more time as
a tool-like instrument than a feudal baron. In the later stages
of human society, most cultures threw out the idea of two kinds
of people and instead accepted an idea of one species, inherently
"equal". The differentiation between the two kinds of
activity thus became implicit within the life of every individual.
In the industrial
society, the differentiation within every individual reached its
peak. Activity as a tool versus activity as a free individual, hours
of work versus hours of leisure, etc. were clearly marked. The mistake
of most economists and Marxists in particular was in their lack
of comprehension of this fact and thinking in terms of mental versus
manual or skilled versus unskilled labor when they were facing discrepancies
in their economic calculations especially after the sudden fall
of the work week in the industrial societies. For example, lifting
weights for muscle building is "fun" and is not work although
it is extremely physical whereas programming computers for the one
writing subroutines for a corporation's accounting system, although
very mental, is nonetheless work, exactly in the sense of a tool-like
activity. The less human beings spend their time in tool-like activities
as a consequence of the fall of the work week, the more "the
essential human activity will resemble the free exploration of an
affluent artist than the soldier-type obedience of a fortuneless
laborer" (Ibid). I will come back to the subject of the affluent
artist, but for now I will explore the dilemma of how these two
kinds of human activity, work and free creative activity, can be
accounted for in economic terms.
I think as far
as tool-like human activity is concerned, the industrialized model
of work is the most advanced form of averaging and takes us the
farthest in actually eliminating work. ("Work" in the
sense discussed above. Although one can use this term for other
types of human activity if one recognizes the connotation of the
usage, e.g., if one likes to call children's homework work knowing
the difference between his meaning and the historical meaning of
the term referring to tool-like activities. Philosophers or scientists
as early as ancient Greece would not call their activities "work!")
Moreover, the best economic description of work in its most advanced
form in the industrial society has been given by the theory of labor-time
value. I think the human activity as such can be best measured as
Marx formulated, by the minimum necessary to keep this "tool"
alive to perform. Even more educated "tools" in such tool-like
activities are paid as a more expensive "tool" whose cost
of education is treated as a refinement. I think the Marxian model
is complete for that kind of human activity and once the other kind
of human activity is separated from it, most discrepancies will
disappear.
Labor-time value
is determined by averaging, i.e., every form of labor-time participates
in this kind of general price of production. The value determination
of products of creative activities is done in a different way *not
by averaging* but by recognizing the *best*. If there is a marathon,
the average runner is of no significance in determining the rewards.
Runners are awarded in comparison to the best runners in other countries,
past years, other regions or schools, etc. The average of different
years or different regions or different groups is of no significance
for the value determination. The scores are compared between the
best and not between the averages. But the award of the best is
determined by the willingness of the awarding committee, city council,
Olympic board, etc. (Here is the transformation from one kind of
value system to another.) Or, what makes a work of art valuable
is not its position relative to the average works around (in time
and space) but its place relative to the best works determine its
value. The criteria may be aesthetic, historic, faddish, etc. It
is not important what makes a product of creative activity the best
or whether it really is the best or is believed to be the best.
What is important is the fact that all other works are not measured
relative to the average and are evaluated relative to the best.
In short, uniqueness value is measured from the best product of
the similar activity.
Now, a product
of a creative activity may be the best and very valuable, but nobody
may be willing to trade it with money (labor-time equivalent). In
such cases the transformation from one kind of value to the other
does not occur. For example, the best work of Middle Eastern philosophy
may not find a publisher to pay even a couple hundred dollars for
its publication even if all the experts in the field consider it
the most valuable. Such are the problems of the transformation between
the two kinds of value systems. The determination of the uniqueness
value and its transformation can be a broad area of inquiry especially
as the trends in the post-industrial societies are conducive to
its growth. (Once the best is recognized and exchanged with money,
millions of copies are made in the other sector of the economy,
the standardized industrial sector, in which everything is done
by labor-time value system.)
PART IV - The Dilemma of Social Justice
Revisited
There seems
to be a basic injustice in the distribution of income that, I believe,
comes from the ranks of the practitioners of the free creative activity
themselves.
I claim that
since free creative activity is becoming the major portion of human
activity in post-industrial societies, the question of a fair or
just distribution of wealth has shifted from the relationship of
owners to non-owners to the relationship of the best creator/performer
to the average (or below) creators/performers. In other words, injustice
is evident when a top musician or movie star makes millions whereas
an average musician cannot even receive a minimum wage for his/her
profession. They are not members of opposite classes and with both
capitalist and socialist measures; the top performers cannot be
accused of "exploiting" others. Yet, it is within the
ranks of the producers that one must look for answers to the question
of distribution of income in post-industrial societies.
The fact is
that in contemporary society, the free creative activity of individuals
replaces tool-like work as the major portion of human activity.
The social groups that are primarily involved in such activities
are the major social forces of the future society. Thus, questions
of social justice must increasingly take these groups into account.
In ancient Greece
it was not of primary importance if the distribution of income among
philosophers was just or unjust: They were essentially acting as
a part of other social groups (e.g. their source of income was the
same as slave owners in Greece and likewise it was the same as the
feudal lords in medieval Europe). But although in the industrial
sector of developed countries the question of justice is still related
to the labor-time compensation in relation to ownership, management,
and meritocratic privileges, etc., it is not true for the people
who are involved in non-tool-like activities. (The concept of labor-time
here is meaningless whether you are the "owner", "manager"
or "laborer" of these activities.)
For example,
a musician who sells millions of copies of his tape gets the bulk
of the profit even though the company that buys the copyright makes
"surplus-value" from the production process. The other
musicians who are suffering and feel "exploited" would
not feel any better if the capitalist gave them all the proceeds
of their not-selling piece of music. Neither is the other capitalist
who is promoting the music of their colleague "exploiting"
them. (Even though their celebrity colleague may sometimes complain
about his contractors, he hardly feels exploited either.) In reality
it is their colleague who is reaping the fruits of the activity
of their whole social group because his work is the best (or accepted
as the best).
The same is
true in movie production, book writing, software design, architectural
plans, etc. For simplification purposes, let's look at a capitalist/worker
model. If we had a factory with 1000 workers and only the best worker
was paid the wages of 800 workers and the rest were unpaid, would
the question of justice be related to the capitalist who does not
pay the surplus value (say equivalent to the wages of 500 workers)
or the "superworker" who is "legitimately" taking
the wages of 800 (and is still himself giving out "surplus-value"
to the owner!)
The carpenter
of classical economists would make a table cheaper or more expensive
relative to the average cost of production. But Leonardo's Mona
Lisa is worth much, much more than its paper and ink and its "labor-time"
cost even if Leonardo was hired by the most generous employer. On
the other hand, thousands of works of art are worth less than the
paper and ink used to produce them and are dumped as trash. (Any
publisher could give you the figure for the dumped hardcovers).
It is looking for the best that justifies the fact that of one hundred
text books on the Strength of Materials, ninety-nine have to fail!
Even if all
revenues from the sale of the product are given to the composer
of a failed music piece, the musician would still not even meet
the minimum survival needs. If the publisher of a not-so-terrific
book does not even take any "surplus value" and gives
all the proceeds to the writer, the writer will still suffer injustice
but not from the owner (manufacturer, or publisher, etc.). If his
book is really worthless, and not judged so simply because of social
trends, then even public opinion is not responsible for the injustice.
On the other
hand, if a best-seller book pays lots of "surplus value"
to the publisher, the "superprofit" of the author is still
not comparable to that of the printer. The author will sell the
copyright for subsequent paperbacks, mass paperbacks, books-on-tape,
movies, plays, etc., if his book keeps on selling for decades. In
such cases the injustice is not due to the employer, it is not even
in the industrial work-place anymore. Instead, it is within the
creative groups themselves. When a top violinist is making money
like a millionaire and an average violinist cannot even make a minimum
wage in his profession, then the dilemma of justice is not between
the owner of the means of production and the worker, but is implicit
in the ethical principles governing the reward of creative activities
in our society.
It is true that
the same problems of just compensation could have been mentioned
for creative professions in the Middle Ages. The crucial differences
are: the speed in which works can be eliminated and "the best"
determined (the Oscars, the Grammy's, the Pulitzers, etc.), and
the continuous rise in the significance of the creative activities
in contemporary life.
Compensation
and rewards for sports or scientific theories is similar to what
was done in ancient Greece but it is done quicker and on a more
global scale. Yet musicians may still have a fate like Mozart if
they are not recognized as the best in their lifetime. The problem
is not that of payment for the "necessary" labor-time
versus nonpayment of the "surplus" value. The problem
is that of social responsibility which is not contained in the reward
system.
I think the
people who are involved in creative activities are the principle
builders of the future human civilization. The issue of justice
is a central problem to our future quality of society. Yet because
it is a problem between professional colleagues rather than between
two opposite social classes, recognition of the issue is difficult.
Star performers continue to appropriate the legitimate expectations
of the average and lower ranked performers. Even rewarding on the
basis of needs (welfare state) does not solve this problem because
it does not recognize intention as a basis for reward (such as the
intention of an anonymous composer is not legitimate for need-based
reward system which prohibits him from even composing.) The "needs"
of a well-known musician for an expensive secluded place for mediation
is the same as that of an anonymous (or even bad) musician. The
"needs" independent of intentions are meaningless for
these groups (just having food and shelter is not enough to compete
with Picasso, especially if you live in Bangladesh).
The difference
between an advanced shoe factory and an average or a less developed
one is not much and the better than average makes a super-profit
which is soon averaged out in the industry. But the difference between
a music tape that sells one hundred copies and a hit that sells
millions, has nothing to do with averaging, etc. There is no law
that obliges such hit creators to subsidize or help the well being
of others in the same profession. He is taxed for his income as
if he had made it in manufacturing or real estate. The allocations
of money to music foundations is not directly related to the income
of the stars because it is a free country.
In the ethics
and law of the industrial society, it is assumed, rightfully, to
expect factory owners to be taxed for the welfare and social security
of their workers and such measures are no longer viewed as the "infringement"
of freedom. But in the case of the artist/workers, to be taxed in
favor of the low paying members of their own profession is frowned
upon. I think even professional organizations (in which celebrities
usually do not participate) are an expression of the needs of the
lower ranks of such professions to claim their share of the income.
Maybe unconsciously the term social-responsibility used by some
of these organizations like Physicians for Social Responsibility
or Computer Scientists for Social Responsibility, is more an expression
of a yearning for justice for themselves!
PART V - Conclusion
The value of
the commodities is determined by the law of labor-time value (averaging)
in the industries and the law of uniqueness value when human activity
is not tool-like. Nonetheless, as Marx said, the question of justice
is not in recognizing the mechanism of value determination and whether
the full value is realized; the question is in introducing a different
social distribution system (and ethics). Contrary to Marx, I think
that the distribution system is not a direct continuation of the
production system. The law of labor-time value is true for the industrial
production (determination by the average) whether the distribution
is capitalistic or socialistic. I think the same is true for the
law of uniqueness value (determination by the best). Once recognizing
its mechanism, we need to propose an alternative distribution system
and I consider what I proposed in the last section as an attempt
in this direction. The problem of social justice has shifted from
opposing social classes to within social groups or classes.
I believe that
just as in physics there are four forces (or five as some physicists
believe); in economics we have two values. And as in physics, where
the unification has already been achieved between the two forces
of electromagnetic and the weak force, I think my proposal for the
unification is one possible way of study in economics. But my main
purpose in this article was to show the significance of the law
of uniqueness value and the need for dealing with the unification
problem of this scheme and to see its implication for addressing
the dilemma of social justice in the near future.
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