Picasso on the value of labor-power ************************* "The Picasso Principle” *************************
*Author: Sean D'Souza* “ There's a story (true or false, I don't know) about the famous artist, Pablo Picasso. *“ It seems a woman came up to him and asked him to sketch something on a piece of paper. * "He sketched it, and gave it back to her saying: ‘That will cost you $10,000.’ “ She was astounded. ‘You took just five minutes to do the sketch,’ she said. ‘Isn't $10,000 a lot for five minutes work?’ *“‘ The sketch may have taken me five minutes, but the learning took me 30 years,’ Picasso retorted.”* https://www.psychotactics.com/the-picasso-principle/ ( https://www.psychotactics.com/the-picasso-principle/ ) As the value of the labor of the unlucky 999 miners (who found no gold in Walter Huston’s “Sierra Madre” analogy below) is preserved in the exchange-value reward of the lucky one who did find gold; so also is the value preserved of all the elements used-up, involved in, the production of a Picasso: his total subsistence, the care in his rearing by his parents, the state paid education, his teachers and his own teachers’ mental and physical exertions, etc during his entire lifetime; as well as his time as an artist and what he has learned during that time. But wait. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It is not just that. Into his value-adding abilities, like the labor of the unlucky 999, so is the value the efforts of a multitude of would-be-could-be-never-w ase s (sic) preserved in the exchange-value of a Picasso. The efforts of these latters are both costs of as well as contributors to the society at large. For that matter the nature of such ‘Picasso’s and their value-adding abilities applies to every worker in every social production economy ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialization_(Marxism) ). Thus e ven the value of the efforts of the failed in all fields is preserved. i ( #sdendnote1sym ) Example: Say there is a market for two of the same items, that are necessities, with each facing x dollars of demand. Say there is a destruction of one. Then the value, and hence the price, of the second goes from x to 2x for the cost of producing that singleton is, ceteris paribus, 2x. Value is then a social and not an individual phenomenon. In this case the social production of value is thus equal to the social costs of production. ii ( #sdendnote2sym ) The one machine comes to cost 2x because it has taken society an amount of factors with a value of 2x to produce it like the 1000 miners it took to find a single ounce of gold. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- i ( #sdendnote1anc ) “ the same amount of labour in favourable seasons is embodied in 8 bushels of corn, and in unfavourable, only in four…” “Capital Vol 1.” Chap 1. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm ) “ Every individual article, or every definite quantity of a commodity may, indeed, contain no more than the social labour required for its production, and from this point of view the market-value of this entire commodity represents only necessary labour, but if this commodity has been produced in excess of the existing social needs, then so much of the social labour-time is squandered and the mass of the commodity comes to represent a much smaller quantity of social labour in the market than is actually incorporated in it….T *he reverse applies if the quantity of social labour* employed in the production of a certain kind of commodity is too small to meet the social demand for that commodity.” Vo 3. Chap X. http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htm ( http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htm ) ii ( #sdendnote2anc ) *“…* if society wants to satisfy some want and have an article produced for this purpose, it must pay for it. Indeed, since commodity-production necessitates a division of labour, society pays for this article by devoting a portion of the available labour-time to its production. Therefore, society buys it with a definite quantity of its disposable labour-time.” Vo 3. Chap X. ( http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htm ) http://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch10.htm *On the Labor Theory of Value* *Walter Huston’s explanation of the Labor Theory of Value in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”* A rather amusing muse on the value of gold (and any commodity) comes with Walter Huston’s explanation in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” in which he, a grizzled old veteran prospector enlightens Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt in a miner’s flop house in Mexico: “ Real bonanzas are few and far between. They take a lot of finding. Answer me this one, will ya, ‘Why is gold worth some 20 bucks an ounce?” “ I don’t know…because it’s scarce?” “ A thousand men, say, go searching for gold. After 6 months, one of ‘ems lucky. One out of a thousand. This one represents not only his own labor but that of the other 999 others to boot. That’s, er, 6000 months, that’s 500years scrabbling over a mountain, going hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, Mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the finding of it and the getting of it.” “ I never thought of it just like that.” “ There’s no other explanation, Mister.” Mister, there’s no other explanation. Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boUD5eG9Bf4 ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boUD5eG9Bf4 ) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#8192): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/8192 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/82319973/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
