Real price

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The real price of goods is a concept from Adam Smith's classical labor theory .

The starting point was the question of classical economics, according to which mechanisms prices and values ​​of goods are determined. Obviously, the market price of a commodity did not correspond to the benefit to be derived from it, the use value. Smith called the example of a diamond that is not equal more expensive than the same amount of water, but not as useful as this ( classical value paradox ).

Smith tried to define a "real" value of any commodity that was independent of fluctuating market prices. The tradition of expressing the value of all products in the form of exchange value in precious metal had become questionable due to the sharp drop in gold and silver prices . Smith now saw human labor as the basis of all commodity value. Its real price corresponded to the amount of labor required to produce a commodity, or the convenience sacrificed by the worker.

Since the labor of labor is the real price of getting something, it is not exchanged for something less labor to get (Smith 1776, The Wealth of Nations).

David Ricardo adopted this theory and described the distribution of labor value among those involved in the form of wages and profit . Finally, Karl Marx examined the mechanisms that enable individuals to accumulate values ​​without doing concrete work themselves, but which prevent everyone else from doing so. His theory deals in depth with the transformation of work into exchange value, into abstract work .

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