#subjective value

Thus the law of value becomes a low of motion for a definite type of social organization based upon the production of commodities… We are thereby led, in the most striking contrast to the outlook of the psychological school, to regard political economy as a part of sociology, and sociology itself as a historical science. Böhm-Bawerk has never become aware of this contrast of outlooks. The question whether the “subjectivist method” or the “objectivist method”... Thus it happens that Böhm-Bawerk, unfailingly carrying on the controversy from his subjectivist and psychological standpoint, discovers contradictions in the Marxist theory which seem to him to be contradictions solely because of his own subjectivist interpretation of the theory.

The Marxist law of value starts from this, that commodities exchange at their values, this meaning that commodities exchange one for another when they embody equal quantities of labor. The equality of quantities of labor is solely a condition for the exchange of commodities at their values. Böhm-Bawerk, entangled in his subjectivist interpretation, mistakes this condition for a condition of exchange in general. But it is obvious that the exchange of commodities at their values, while one the one hand it merely constitutes the theoretical starting point for a subsequent analysis, one the other hand directly controls a historic phase of the production of commodities, a phase to which a specific kind of competition corresponds.

The discovery of an objective law of value, no matter how it may be formulated, can never be consciously intended [by the Austrian school], because the individual will only follow the impulses of individual interest. The only question is whether, by the individual will doing this, by all the individual wills doing this, an objective law can (and indeed must) unconsciously and unintentionally arise, a law of value as envisaged by the classics of political economy, to whose rule all the individual acts of exchange are subject... whether these really operative psychological factors preclude the existence of an objective law of value or whether, on the contrary, they permit its existence or even presuppose it as a necessary consequence. The examination will be somewhat tedious, because we must begin with abstract isolated persons, as postulated by the barren arbitrariness of this school of psychologists.

The Austrians have the character not so much of theoretical explanation as of justification for capitalist society… These explicit social sympathies on the part of the Austrian economists, together with the fundamental peculiarities of their theoretical position — replacement of the capitalist form of economy with “pure economic activity” in general; transformation of a society consisting of specific classes into an aggregation of individual Robinson Crusoes; the idea that the moving forces of the economy are the psychological experiences and motivations of separate individuals as consumers; transfer of the research focus from the sphere of production to the sphere of consumption; ignoring the dynamics of the economy and its tendencies of development — all of these attributes characterize their doctrine as a theoretical tendency that corresponds with the ideology of the bourgeoisie in the epoch of capitalism’s decline, a time when any objective study of the tendencies of social development leads to the conclusion of capitalist economy’s inevitable destruction.

Some new thoughts/ perspectives on Bohm-Bawerk. Marx, of course, attended extensively to supply and demand. And if demand increases, what Marx called the “corrosive laws of competition” will increase production/ supply and prices will (again) gravitate around the costs of production. Is this too simple? Am I missing something? It does seem absurd to base the determination of prices on subjective demand. And, also, the (changing) subjective value that individuals or groups place on particular products has noting to do with and is not on the same  “plane” as Marx’s concept and law of value. Bohm-Bawerk appears only to throw more fodder into the dust bin of psychologistic drivel related to consumer demand and related marketing and production goals in capitalist economies.

All Value Is Subjective, and That’s a Good Thing - The Frontier Post