Equivalence swap
The equivalence exchange or exchange of equivalents is from economic sociological viewing an exchange , wherein the goods with identical values are exchanged. Therefore, it is considered a just exchange. In classical political economy , commodity values embody the reproduction costs that are necessary to restore them, calculated in labor quanta (see labor theory ). Adam Smith vacillates in determining the “true” or “natural” value: on the one hand, he sees the amount of labor expended and, on the other hand, the production costs as the measure of the exchange value of goods.
From a Marxist point of view, the wage worker suffers an exchange disadvantage when exchanging work for wages. It is true that labor, like all goods, is valued and paid for according to its reproduction costs, but it is the only commodity that has the advantage of generating a higher volume of value than it needs to reproduce. Without a formal violation of the equivalence principle, the capitalist appropriates the unpaid surplus product or surplus value .
In the Marxist ideology criticism , the equivalence exchange functions as the basic model of bourgeois ideology, which draws its ideas of equality and justice from the sphere of the circulation of goods, while ignoring the sphere of production, the place of exploitation of wage labor.
Objective versus subjective value theory
The equivalence exchange is an exchange under the assumption that the thing to be exchanged or the service to be exchanged has an objective value . This assumption is supported by classical political economy and by Karl Marx . Accordingly, the value of a commodity determines the quantity of labor which is objectified in it and which is necessary for its production.
More recent theories that emerged (after 1870) ( see: Grenznutzenschule , Hermann Heinrich Gossen , Carl Menger , Friedrich von Wieser , Stanley Jevons , Léon Walras ) assume, however, that the value of a good or a service is a purely subjective quantity and therefore not objective is measurable.
literature
- Werner Hofmann : Value and price theory . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1964.
Remarks
- ↑ Horst Claus Recktenwald: Foreword to: Adam Smith: The prosperity of the nations. An investigation into its nature and its causes . dtv, Munich 1978, S. LIV. See also Charles Gide / Charles Rist: History of economic doctrines . Edited by Franz Oppenheimer. Gustav Fischer, Jena 1913, p. 86ff.