“After wealth, value is defined as follows:
In other words, value is price. Or rather, in order not to do Herr Dühring an injustice and give the absurdity of his definition as far as possible in his own words: value are the prices.” (p 239)
In essence, that is the position of vulgar economics, and of the later neoclassical school, but an inverse of it can also be found in some later “Marxist” theories in which value is conflated with exchange-value, and exchange-value, thereby, with price. It is seen in explanations of inflation, which confuse that term with rising commodity values. As Marx sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 20, one of the earliest proponents of this subjective theory of value was Samuel Bailey. According to Bailey, value and exchange value are the same thing, because the value of commodity A that I wish to exchange, is only equal to what someone is prepared to give me in exchange for it. For each possible exchange there are as many possible variants, because it will depend on the subjective preferences of these potential buyers. In other words, an early application of the idea behind the water-diamond paradox.
Duhring puts forward this same idea, but in his own pompous and confused style.
“For he says on page 19: "value, and the prices expressing it in money"
— thus himself stating that the same value has very different prices and consequently also just as many different values. If Hegel had not died long ago, he would hang himself; with all his theologizing he could not have thought up this value which has as many different values as it has prices. Once again, it needs someone with Herr Dühring's brashness to inaugurate a new and deeper foundation for economics with the declaration that there is no difference between price and value except that one is expressed in money and the other is not.” (p 239)
As Marx explained, and sets out, in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 20, in dismantling Bailey's argument, value and exchange-value are two related, but distinct and different things. Value is labour, and the measure of value is labour-time. A use-value can have value as a product, without having exchange-value, i.e. it is the difference between a product and a commodity. But, a commodity cannot have exchange-value without itself, first, being a product, and having value. Exchange-value is itself only an indirect measure of value, a derivative of it. It measures the value of one commodity, not directly, in terms of the labour-time required for its production, but indirectly, by the quantity of some other commodity it is equal to.
But, as Marx sets out in Theories of Surplus Value, Chapter 20, in order to make this determination, all commodities must themselves have value, and it must, then, be possible to compare the value of one commodity to another, in order to establish their proportional relation one to another.
In order to say that 2A = 1B, it is necessary to know the value of both A and B. It is necessary to equate both 2A and 1B to some third thing which both have in common, i.e. their value/labour-time required for their production. If 2A is 2 metres of linen, and 1A is 1 litre of wine, all that this equation – their exchange-value to each other – means is that they both represent an equal amount of labour-time, say, 10 hours. Illustrating this point, the same equation – exchange-value – results if the value of both is not 10 hours, but 20, 30, or 100 hours.
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