Book/Culture of value

The society and culture built upon the interpretation of the average value

Popular beliefs about the interpretation of the average value

Value judgments in art are so abstract that even with respect to their most reasonable goals—establishing a frame of reference for taste—they may be too abstract for their own good. All value judgments are a variation of the statement “This work is great.” This commonplace condenses the various beliefs whose meaning society at large takes for granted due to a lack of awareness.

“This work is great and there are great reasons for that”: the myth of the mathematical average value's objectivity

The average value mosaic is structured like a tech review, albeit less formally. A video game review is typically broken down into sub-reviews for graphics, sound, gameplay, controls, replay value, etc. But while a video game’s overall rating has a loose correlation to its sub-ratings, the average value in art is, as the saying goes, “more than the sum of its parts.” Obviously, a good overall rating for a video game is hardly compatible with very low sub-ratings, especially in this day and age, but high sub-ratings are absolutely compatible with low overall ratings, and different reviewers in perfect agreement over the sub-ratings can very well disagree on the overall rating.

So the overall rating has an arbitrary quality irreducible to the mathematical averaging of all sub-ratings, and yet most don’t question the objectivity of this kind of rating. According to this belief, in order to obtain an objective overall value you would only have to calculate the average of the sub-ratings of carefully chosen criteria. If each criterion is objective, it must follow that the mathematical average is objective, right? So, for a music review, I could choose album variety and musicianship over fuzzier criteria like lyrical expressiveness or originality. But the selection process itself is not objective. Not everyone seeks album variety, and not every kind of music gains from great musicianship—in fact, great musicianship can sometimes be perceived as a sign of the artist “selling out.”

Of course, critics don’t necessarily show all their cards and may refrain from giving more detailed explanations of their ratings. Because of this, they generally get the benefit of the doubt—or rather, we don’t even think of demanding more, perhaps because we already know deep down that objectivity, at least in these kinds of reviews, is an illusion.

“This work is more or less okay.”: faith in value judgments that seem all the more objective the more precise they sound

The average value looks objective because of its mathematical foundation, and this is only reinforced by the use of adverbs and qualifiers to create a sense of precision in the language.

“It is truly great.”

“It might just be one of his best work to date.”

“It’s almost great, but it distinctively lacks something to get into the upper echelon.”

“It easily belongs to the top 3 most impressive works of the last decade.”

“This album manages to be dark, yet gleeful. This proves how great of an artist they are.”

All these commonplace subtleties hardly address the content. Instead, they hint at a subjective frame of reference that has its own language. It is as if in order to make up for the lack of objective communication about the content, one had invoked ex nihilo an empty language to fill up the void. In fact, the more qualifiers in the language, the more convincing the argument for an objective correlation between the content and the critic’s review.

At level zero of precision, a critic says a work is great or bad. When someone says that a work is great, you seem to understand completely. It means that the work is on the short list of items they’d take to a desert island. But sometimes it is not that simple. You see, this work is great, but it is not truly great according to this particular person’s criteria, so it doesn’t make the short list. In fact, any kind of greatness can be misleading, for a work can always be “greater than great,” “beyond great,” or quite simply, “there’s no word to describe it.” It’s the same as advertising, where washing powder can “wash whiter than white.” In the field of quiet computing, we had “silent computer fans,” then “extreme silent fans,” “virtually silent fans,” “real silent fans,” “noiseless fans,” etc. No nuance is too subtle to pad the void of content. Something can be so good that it is too good!

“Top 3 most impressive works of all time” has more often than not been more hyperbole than ranking. Do you seriously think all the people who casually mention their top X lists took the time to compare all the works they know? You can bet that someone who says that “it is in my top 3” could have been tricked into saying the same for more than 3 things. Or that they haven’t really pondered what the other 2 works in the top 3 might actually be, and that if they actually did the ranking, there may very well be quite too many works to fit into a top 3. You can bet there are fans who would say of Cristiano Ronaldo: “Oh, judging by his talent alone, he should have already won the Ballon d’Or at least 5 times.” Lionel Messi? Since he’s better than Ronaldo, maybe “7-8 times.” It is totally irrelevant that there can only be 10 Ballons d’Or per decade.

We already saw how these subtleties of language translate to “expert” reviews. In the Cézanne review, one can read: “at once subtle and strong,” “a little meticulous and stiff,” “The idea of the work, its method and devices, are more tangible than in Cézanne’s later art; but this absorbing seriousness and frankness are part of the charm of the work.” This balancing act reads like wine tasting: “Richly fruited flavor and lively acidity. Lots of plummy fruit and firm but well integrated tannins.” Or try: “Particularly dry style, although the concentration and maturity stop it from being overly austere. Pastry shop and toast characteristics add depth and complexity. Exotic fruit, patisserie, roasted nuts, spring flowers.” Before you try to put price tags on the corresponding wines, did you know that one costs 10 times as much as the other? This shouldn’t be more illogical than deducing the “magnificency” of Cézanne’s “masterpiece” from Schapiro’s review.

Of course, one has to take judgments for what they’re worth:

❝ To ensure impartial judgment of a wine, it should be served blind—that is, without the taster(s) having seen the label or bottle shape. Blind tasting may also involve serving the wine from a black wine glass to mask the color of the wine. A taster’s judgment can be prejudiced by knowing details of a wine, such as geographic origin, price, reputation, color, or other considerations.

Scientific research has long demonstrated the power of suggestion in perception as well as the strong effects of expectancies. For example, people expect more expensive wine to have more desirable characteristics than less expensive wine. When given wine that they are falsely told is expensive they virtually always report it as tasting better than the very same wine when they are told that it is inexpensive. French researcher Frédéric Brochet “submitted a mid-range Bordeaux in two different bottles, one labeled as a cheap table wine, the other bearing a grand cru etiquette.” Tasters described the supposed grand cru as “woody, complex, and round” and the supposed cheap wine as “short, light, and faulty.”

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English Wikipedia

Blind tasting, in Wine tasting

By all accounts, such exercises in deduction are the human limit in “expert” analysis, whether it’s for a Jackson Pollock painting, a mosaic of independent features, or—a favorite subject of mine—sports, where a journalist or “expert” can say one thing and then the opposite in the same breath while appearing competent enough to keep their job:

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Can Novak Djokovic win all 4 Grand Slams next year?

Tennistically, yes. Also, one can say that the more time passes, the greater his dominance, that is, the firmer his mental edge over his opponents. However, his exceptional win streak cannot last. If he manages to stay focused, he will succeed. His success this year owes a large part to his daily mental work. He won all year long. That’s the key to his success. But this is also what is difficult to maintain.

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Eurosport.fr tennis consultant

In order to churn out this kind of “analysis,” our brave tennis consultant just has to look up Djokovic’s wins column on Wikipedia. He doesn’t need to actually watch tennis matches or know tennis at all. Only precise language can make it look like something has been said. However, the unfortunate side of it is that the more precise and subtle the language, the more tautological it is (“winning all year long” being “the key to success” is quite the revelation, if you ask me), or the harder it is for it to stay compatible with other statements or even itself, e.g., when the win streak “cannot last” but then “will succeed if…”

“This work is great for everybody.”: superficial debates and consensus, and the myth of universality

No amount of reality check is going to validate this assertion, which is usually implied in the deceptively humble-looking statement that “this work is great.” But this is far from stopping the reflex belief in the universality of one’s tastes; otherwise we wouldn’t be buried under the billions of YouTube comments about how much some unknown dude likes an album and the proof is that it saved their life when they were ill or depressed or whatever. The only way such comments make sense is when you know the author of the comment and have some context for what they say; then you can maybe put the comment to good use. But make no mistake, most authors of such comments certainly don’t post these comments only for their acquaintances. They really believe that greatness emanates from the work, or they would finally realize that statements like “my top 10 of all time” means nothing for essentially all of mankind. For all we know, the commentator could be an 8 year-old (increasingly common these days) who has listened to maybe 8 albums total in their lifetime, or who has 5 Justin Bieber albums in that top 10. When one says “album of the year,” do you really think they’ve taken into account that most people don’t give a shit about the opinion of just one out of countless social geeks who, for all we know, spent the year listening to emo-core?

A correlate to the belief of universal opinions is reviewers sticking to one rating for all. For example, tablet reviewers keep comparing the reviewed tablet to Apple’s iPad. This works to a certain extent, except when the reviewed product actually targets a different demographic, e.g., tablets with a Wacom stylus that target graphic designers and note-takers rather than media consumers. It is very hard for them to let the review stand at “For creative types, we recommend this tablet; for media consumption types, prefer the iPad.” They are compelled to stick to judgments such as “the iPad is better than this tablet” and bring up pixel density. But even if the iPad does fare better in this department, it is of absolutely no use to stylus users.

Another correlate is people’s incredulity when confronted with adverse opinions:

“I don’t understand how you can find this terrible work great.”

This statement contains two variations of the “value is always relative to someone” truism. On the one hand, “you find this work great” means this is “great for you.” On the other hand, the expression “this terrible work” is a prejudiced way to say, “I, contrary to you, find this work terrible.” It is only after demystifying the language that the statement reveals the prejudice: “Since I find this work terrible and given the noted belief in the universality of opinions, I don’t understand how you can find it great.” As an aside, this kind of asymmetry in the expression of subjectivity is exactly what undermines Marx’s value theory (which will be discussed shortly).

The same language mystification animates debates on humor. On Uncyclopedia, the parody of Wikipedia, contributors regularly enter into arguments based on misunderstandings grounded in this mystification. They say:

“I don’t understand how you can find this terrible article hilarious.”

In the best case, the arguments linger until the parties agree to disagree.

But even when opinions match, experience teaches us that the agreement is only on the surface.

Guy 1 : Metal is so superior to commercial MTV crap.

Guy 2 : Yeah, old Metallica bests mallcore all day.

Guy 1 : Yeah, … And Justice for all was truly a masterpiece. It stirred my soul and gave me purpose in life.

Guy 2 : Well, I think they sold out after Master of Puppets.

Guy 1 : What? You must be kidding, right?

Guy 3 may agree with Master of Puppets being Metallica’s best, and even acquiesce Guy 1’s attempt at a technical analysis of the Master of Puppets riffs. It would seem that finally we have an objective take on taste here! But then, guy 1 goes on to discover that guy 3 also likes Sepultura’s Roots album over Morbid Visions. Too bad.

“This work is truly great.”: the myth of better objectivity

Certainly, there are trained ears in the entertainment industry that are paid to find out if a work has all the makings of a big hit, and they are paid according to the accuracy of their predictions. So scientists have been trying to steal their job:

❝ By analyzing 50 years of the greatest music known to man, scientists from the University of Bristol, England have created software that can accurately predict whether a new chart entry will be a pop success—or not.

With an accuracy of 60%, the Bristolian formula can predict whether a song will be a smash hit and make it to the top five of the UK Top 40 Singles chart, or flop and never make it above position 30. To do this, a combination of computer hearing and machine learning; computer hearing to analyze a song’s loudness, danceability, duration, and 20 other features that might predict a hit or flop, and machine learning to integrate the findings from a huge corpus of tunes that span five decades into some kind of magic formula that actually works.

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Sebastian Anthony

Computer software accurately predicts pop song’s chart success, extremetech.com

So even if the myth of the universality of taste is debunked, one can at least be tempted to argue that one’s taste is “more objective.” For example, someone could try to back up the claim by proving that their taste is consistent with the results of the predictive algorithm. But the algorithm is programmed to reflect the tastes of the UK in the last 50 years. The claim to one’s objectivity thus becomes the even bolder claim that UK consumers were “more objective” in their taste during the last 50 years. So although one’s tastes may objectively correlate more to commercial success than other tastes, saying they are more objective than others is the same fallacious claim to be absolute that it has always been.

“This work’s greatness is timeless.”: the myth of the “classics” and ageing well as a criterion

The usual belief is that only great works survive. If it's still being talked about decades later, then the work must be great. Of course, one can always “relax” the criterion to fit one’s needs. For example, if an album that you feel sucks is still popular decades later, you can always claim that the real test is when it still matters centuries later. Of course, by then it becomes an irrefutable argument that can be used by both you and your interlocutors.

❝ In Flames

First there was At the Gates, who made The Red in the Sky is Ours, and blew us all away. Then came black metal. Then came Dissection. Then someone wondered what would happen if you took Dissection and dumbed it down, made it a little more like regular rock ’n’ roll, and claimed it was new and exciting. I guess that person was a genius because people still take In Flames seriously, although at the time their first CD came out metalheads universally viewed them as clueless, wimpy and latecoming carpetbaggers. These guys are ripping off Iron Maiden on every album. They get away with it because their fans want to think they're new and fresh and evil, not warmed-over 1978 heavy metal. These retreads from the mid-1990s keep puking out the crap and for some reason, people still discuss them.

[…]

There you have it: a catalogue of fail. Or rather, fail that is highly praised by those who know not much of anything. Naturally, products designed for idiots that make idiots feel like geniuses are big sellers, so you’ll have to suffer seeing these bands around for a while yet. But as time goes on, it’s amazing how the crap gets filtered out and the really powerful stuff endures.

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Anus.com

Metal Bands to Love to Hate

What’s even more amazing is how the author relies on this “crap gets filtered out and the really powerful stuff endures” argument when “people still take In Flames seriously.” He can still come out of this self-dug hole by playing either the “should be judged over centuries” card—the unfortunate side effect being that this would also preclude praising any metal band—or the “as far as metalheads are concerned” card, which is an argument from authority that depends on whether or not we can ever agree on who’s a “metalhead” or not—a debate that can only end with a recursive argument from authority, or, more likely, with an ad hoc definition of “metalhead”—e.g., “a metalhead is any metal fan and intellectual who thinks In Flames is crap.”

“This work is great in every aspect.”: the myth of perfection as the pinnacle of refinement

This myth is the ability to recognize perfection when we see it, measure the distance to it, predict it, rate it. In this line of thinking, progress is refinement and the “best” art is the pinnacle of refinement. A great song is a song with great production, great vocals (preferably something that shows off the singer’s capabilities), great lyrics, great emotional depth, great chorus, etc. It is assumed that if one improved the song piecemeal, one would arrive at perfection. A perfect song is the same previous song with perfect production, perfect vocals, etc. An “artist coach”—think of a coach mandated by a talent show like The Voice—just needs to ask of their protégé “better vocals, more emotional depth, etc.” If nothing works, they can always ask—like most clueless coaches—that their protégé “work harder.” What would become of art if we weren’t wowed by the hard labor put into works (i.e., the materialistic fetishism mentioned by Marx)? The value of grand realizations, say the Eiffel Tower, would be the value of their plastic miniature—that is, not much. Portraits that required years of subtle touches just to be photorealistic would not be worth more than a cheap selfie on a smartphone.

This is consistent with the contemporary taste for artistic performance and the glorification of the performer rather than the composer. The performer is supposed to perform according to a public idea of perfection. But the composer decides how the performer must perform. The composer can decide to break the rules and one’s preconceptions of a “good” performance. One might criticize the composer, but not the performer, if the latter performed the way the composer intended, although in our value-based culture, we always seem to put ourselves in a position to do so, and that is the myth.

In music, ears are automatically tuned to the “right” key. Should the artist sing off-key, most listeners will spot it. They are so absurdly trained that they can even declare off-key new original songs whose off-key singing would be part of the artistic design. I emphasize “trained” here, for a certain innocence is lost on a lot of them, the kind of innocence that makes children lash out at a perfectly sung soprano piece because the singer “grates on their ears.”

But then, if off-key and on-key singing are equal, shouldn’t the losers of talent shows demand compensation? There is truth in that argument, but the contestants of talent shows have bought into the idea of perfect singing. Losing contestants have just lost to the rules of the game to which they willingly submitted, so it is only fair and productive for them to be criticized and rejected. But in the general context of song composition, the rules are made by the composer, not Simon Cowell, which is a fact routinely overlooked.

In video gaming, players want better textures, better camera angles, better water effects, better jiggle effects for the big-breasted heroine, more intuitive “kinetic” controls, etc. From a stage where gaming concepts had to be invented, we have arrived at a stage where the completely linear evolution of the games is all but figured out. Modern video gaming has witnessed the emergence of an industry of interactive movies with portions of button-mashing and so-called Quick Time Events where the player is told by the game which buttons to press. In role-playing games, a huge part of the game is spent “leveling up,” the process of buffing up one’s character stats during increasingly repetitive fights in order to stand up to the next boss, repeating what is essentially a variation of the “attack, heal, attack, heal” pattern. The rest is made up of various actions that trigger unplayable story sequences which advance the main plot. The cinematographic orientation obviously emphasizes refinements such as increased realism, better plots (usually another dressed-up love or friendship story), and the mandatory plot twists (bad guy becomes good guy, one good guy dies, catastrophe that the player worked his ass off to prevent happens, etc.).

Speaking of plots, we know so well what we like or what perfect is, that we could dictate it to the script writer.

❝ The most commonly criticized element of the film is its ending. The film has a more traditional “happy ending” which contradicts the tone of the rest of the picture. This has led to speculation that this ending is the product of John’s imagination, caused by hallucinations from his forced coma after he is incarcerated. As one observer mused, “The conclusion of Minority Report strikes me as a joke Spielberg played on his detractors—an act of perfectly measured deviltry.”

Though unconfirmed by Spielberg, another recent change to subsequent prints adds weight to the theory. When released in 2002, PreCrime was dismantled and the precogs allowed to live in peace, a final epilogue declared that, upon the end of PreCrime, murders had returned to Washington, D.C. In subsequent releases, this tag was removed and with it, the sole negative consequence to Anderton’s choices. For some, this solidifies the idea of a “perfect,” dream-like ending—and ultimately a false one. As one critic theorized, “…[r]ather than end this Brazilian sci-fi dystopia with the equivalent of that film’s shot of its lobotomized hero, which puts the lie to the immediately previous scene of his imagined liberation, Spielberg tries to pass off the exact same ending but without the rimshot, just to see if the audience is paying attention.” Film scholars Nigel Morris and Jason P. Vest point to a line in the film as possible evidence of this. After Anderton is captured, Gideon tells him that, “It’s actually kind of a rush. They say you have visions. That your life flashes before your eyes. That all your dreams come true.” While Vest considers the blissful dream ending a possibility, he questions why Anderton did not imagine his son as having returned.

Buckland expressed disappointment in the ending, but blamed Frank. He felt that given the water theme, and closely tied together tragic parent-child theme, Anderton should have ended the film by taking Agatha in his care if Spielberg wanted a happy ending. Especially since “Anderton kidnaps Agatha from the precog pool just as his son was kidnapped from a swimming pool” and because Anderton could act as a “substitute parent for Agatha, and Agatha… a substitute child for Anderton.” This opportunity is missed however, when the precogs are sent to the remote island, and Anderton reunites with his wife; an ending which Buckland finds more “forced” than the “more authentic” path he feels he noticed.

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English Wikipedia

Minority Report (film)

In cinema, critics are keen on remarking that an actor “underacts,” “overacts,” or is just “self-conscious” or “bad.” Most of the time, the claimed measuring stick is reality, so that “bad” acting means “not believable” acting. But the ability actually goes beyond that. In a totally fictitious work like the The Wizard of Oz, the viewers can still tell whether the Tin Man or the Cowardly Lion are believable or not. And in a biopic that depicts the life of some real person, they claim they can tell whether the portrayal is realistic or not, despite never having seen the subject of the film in real life. Take, for example, Diane Downs, infamous for killing her 3 children. When Downs (in the movie) arrives at the hospital in her car, having just shot her children in it and pretending it was some “bushy-haired stranger” on the run, the viewers can judge whether her panic is believable. But first, they should ask themselves whether they have to judge the reenacting of the feigned panic of a real person who tells lies very well, or the feigned panic of a real person who’s a bad actress in real life, or the real panic of a schizophrenic woman who really believes in her made-up story, or the panic of a weird woman who doesn’t so much want to act out a conscious lie as to to sincerely believe in her made-up story, etc. Do you seriously think movie critics know how Diane Downs actually behaved before making their judgment? No, but nonetheless they can grade the acting performance right away. For them a panic is a panic, and it must sound certain ways. Had they attended the Downs trial, they would have been exposed to Downs’ light-hearted re-enactment of the crime scene and her weird emotional responses:

❝ Dr. John Mackey, who was in charge of ER the evening of the murder, described the children’s chest wounds and the medical team’s first, spontaneous efforts of life saving. He then recollected his observation of Diane: “She was extremely composed. She was unbelievably composed. I couldn’t believe she was a family member. There were no tears… no disbelief… no, 'Why did this happen to me?'”

X-ray Technician Carleen Elbridge could not get over the fact that Diane, a mother of three severely wounded children, complained about having to be seen in public without makeup.

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Crime Library

Diane Downs: Her Children Got in the Way of Her Love

This Crime Library quote makes it clear that the preposterous sense of believability is more of a very general issue of prejudice than an acting issue. The same people who dismiss artistic license by implying they know how characters should be portrayed look like those who fall for real life’s knack for making born actors. Should Diane Downs appear as unbelievable to our critics as she did to Dr. John Macey, we would have a remarkable but not uncommon case of reality not being realistic enough. “But,” says the movie jury, “she’s a messed-up psychopath. That’s why her emotions are messed up.” Then the same movie jury must have been rubbing their eyes when Ted Bundy, the perfect groom who fielded calls in a crisis clinic and a rising star of the Washington State Republican Party, was first alleged to live the double life of a sexual predator and to be one of the most prolific serial killers of our time. They must somewhat feel like crime writer Ann Rule, who went to great lengths about her friendship with Ted Bundy and her inability to reconcile Bundy’s Jekyll to his Hyde in her autobiographical book, The Stranger Beside Me. In his own role, Bundy would be unbelievable. A murderer that sick couldn’t act so normal, at least according to the Diane Downs theory; a murderer is a “monster,” and so their behavior must be monstrous. Such thinking makes me foresee a future where every person unable to put up a tearful performance worthy of Meryl Streep should start fearing for their legal immunity if one of their acquaintances should vanish mysteriously.

One might object that unbelievability is very real: the actor playing Ted Bundy would be unbelievable if he flubbed his lines, suddenly started to speak Yiddish, or told the camera how bad of an acting job he was doing. I could playfully argue, “Because he is a psychopath! Psychopaths constantly act! They constantly rehearse in their messed-up head what they want to say! They’re so paranoid they believe they live in front of cameras!” If this explanation is not believable enough for you, then you will have to explain how keeping your victim’s severed head in your fridge and applying make-up to it for one’s viewing pleasure is more believable.

Now, the only reason my argument is funny is because it takes its humor from critics’ compulsion to put realism and its clichés on a pedestal.

One might throw in the towel and employ sarcasm: “I guess that all actors are Academy Award material, then!” Or it may be that conformity to this ideal of perfection is only relevant because we've decided it should be. The film may continue to function at other levels even if the actor who plays Ted Bundy flubs his lines. Of course, flubbing can be blamed, especially when a sensational film's intention is to win Best Actor at the Academy Awards, or to be accepted by a public that has its references. But if you take the blaming route, I take it as an admission that you bought into the naive cliché of this movie being the serious portrayal of a serious serial killer. “A serial killer never flubs his lines nor his killing sprees. He is a straightforward monster to be feared, not ridiculed.” This cliché is consistent with the popular view that Nazi jokes are to be banished as socially inappropriate under the pretense that “they trivialize the Holocaust.” (By the way, how can a moralist banish jokes considered harmful to the Nazi regime by the Nazis themselves, as Rudolph Herzog recounts in his Dead Funny: Humour in Hitler’s Germany?)

But just as what one sees on screen is not a magical gateway to reality, the claim to “being the portrayal of a serious serial killer” stays a claim, maybe a part of the artistic design. It is the same as the “based on a true story” claim at the start of the movie, which experienced cinephiles have already learned to see as the perfect warning sign that the film is a total invention, which even directors, such as the Coen brothers in Fargo, have acknowledged deliberately abusing. It’s not the myth of acting perfection that is damaging—people do enjoy judging acting skill—but the fact that if acting flaws don’t matter in the movie’s design, you can be sure the chorus of “bad acting” will be sung anyway and detract from the big picture. Think of a critic watching a Superman movie and criticizing the acting skills of the actor who plays Clark Kent, judging his reactions to Lois Lane’s death to be "unbelievable": “Too flat in his emotional delivery, given that Lois Lane was the love of his life.” And, what do you know, in the next scene he takes off into the sky.

In general, belief in the objectivity of value collapses under intense—and, shall we add, honest—critical scrutiny. It is not unlike the missionary’s evangelistic quest among primitive God-less tribes: when forced to explain in clearly definable—actually communicable—terms, he can only come up with concepts, such as “Master of space,” that sound ridiculous to the occidental ears. But the matter of fact is that one can hardly do better without entering into definition loops, such as “God is the incarnation of perfection,” “perfection is timelessness, spirituality, infinite wisdom,” “spirituality is God,” and so on. Of course, such loops can only convey so much meaning beyond the fact that they mean “great” things. Too bad if “infinite wisdom” is objectively as opaque as “God,” in particular if the missionary’s “infinite wisdom” is concretely implemented in terms of human exploitation, enrichment of the colonial power, cultural domination, etc. Of course, one could dispense with all the frills and get to the heart of the matter: “God is what provokes spiritual awe and profession of faith,” a definition that somewhat conveys the wishful character of propagandistic communication.

“I can sense that this work is great.”: the myth of natural value

Sometimes, people say or imply that they can sense greatness, like a sixth or seventh sense, in the sense that a work has a “natural value” that one can sense or feel. But theories of naturalness are always pure bias. For example, someone might feel that democracy is more natural than dictatorship. But is it also natural that everybody be equally fit to vote, with equally favorable intellectual faculties, under equally favorable conditions for good judgment (education, time to follow the news, no external pressure, self-disinterest)? Another might argue that heterosexuality is more natural than homosexuality, since it favors social growth and conforms to the natural dispositions of the human organism. First, why would favoring “social growth” be “natural,” given the (natural?) tendency of masses to self-destruct? Nuclear world wars can only happen in a context of social growth where the masses provide the political leaders with the brain and manufacturing power to make planet-sized bombs. Planetary ecological catastrophes can only occur on a large scale only compatible with social growth. Second, to state that A is more natural because it conforms to B, which is supposed to be natural, is just to move the problem from A to B. So if I say that the heterosexual dispositions of the human organism are natural, it may be because they favor social growth, which is more natural because…

Even the more formal attempts at defining “natural value” are fatally flawed. Take Marx’s labor theory of value. Marx’s self-called “more natural” opinion is that value is labor value. Granted, labor is a constant factor, even in art. How often has one been wowed by something because it required a lot of work? That labor be the factor, is, however, a more hazardous hypothesis, if only because Marx, in order to get his labor theory of value going, needed to “forget” that the use-value—specifically the use-value for the buyer—also had a role in exchange (cf. the section on labour value), not only labor.

Marx proposes “weight” as a metaphor of value:

❝ The bodily form of the commodity becomes its value form. But, mark well, that this quid pro quo exists in the case of any commodity B, only when some other commodity A enters into a value relation with it, and then only within the limits of this relation. Since no commodity can stand in the relation of equivalent to itself, and thus turn its own bodily shape into the expression of its own value, every commodity is compelled to choose some other commodity for its equivalent, and to accept the use value, that is to say, the bodily shape of that other commodity as the form of its own value.

One of the measures that we apply to commodities as material substances, as use values, will serve to illustrate this point. A sugar-loaf being a body, is heavy, and therefore has weight: but we can neither see nor touch this weight. We then take various pieces of iron, whose weight has been determined beforehand. The iron, as iron, is no more the form of manifestation of weight, than is the sugar-loaf. Nevertheless, in order to express the sugar-loaf as so much weight, we put it into a weight-relation with the iron. In this relation, the iron officiates as a body representing nothing but weight. A certain quantity of iron therefore serves as the measure of the weight of the sugar, and represents, in relation to the sugar-loaf, weight embodied, the form of manifestation of weight. This part is played by the iron only within this relation, into which the sugar or any other body, whose weight has to be determined, enters with the iron. Were they not both heavy, they could not enter into this relation, and the one could therefore not serve as the expression of the weight of the other. When we throw both into the scales, we see in reality, that as weight they are both the same, and that, therefore, when taken in proper proportions, they have the same weight. Just as the substance iron, as a measure of weight, represents in relation to the sugar-loaf weight alone, so, in our expression of value, the material object, coat, in relation to the linen, represents value alone.

 ❞

Karl Marx

The Equivalent form of value

In the metaphor, one uses scales to determine the weight. But the reader is still left wondering what kind of “scales” would be needed calculate value. We could “weigh” weight, temperature, nutritive content, labor, use-value-for-others, supply, demand, etc. Labor is only one factor among others.

Marx claims that labor value is a “scientific discovery:”

❝ Hence, when we bring the products of our labour into relation with each other as values, it is not because we see in these articles the material receptacles of homogeneous human labour. Quite the contrary: whenever, by an exchange, we equate as values our different products, by that very act, we also equate, as human labour, the different kinds of labour expended upon them. We are not aware of this, nevertheless we do it. Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is. It is value, rather, that converts every product into a social hieroglyphic. Later on, we try to decipher the hieroglyphic, to get behind the secret of our own social products; for to stamp an object of utility as a value, is just as much a social product as language. The recent scientific discovery, that the products of labour, so far as they are values, are but material expressions of the human labour spent in their production, marks, indeed, an epoch in the history of the development of the human race, but, by no means, dissipates the mist through which the social character of labour appears to us to be an objective character of the products themselves.  ❞

Karl Marx

The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret thereof

But price—which any “scientific discovery” must necessarily start with, because it’s the one tangible fact that expresses value—is more complex than labor value. Marx actually explains away the oscillations of price as “accidental,” and defines the constant part to be the “natural price” of labor:

❝ Classical Political Economy borrowed from every-day life the category “price of labour” without further criticism, and then simply asked the question, how is this price determined? It soon recognized that the change in the relations of demand and supply explained in regard to the price of labour, as of all other commodities, nothing except its changes i.e., the oscillations of the market-price above or below a certain mean. If demand and supply balance, the oscillation of prices ceases, all other conditions remaining the same. But then demand and supply also cease to explain anything. The price of labour, at the moment when demand and supply are in equilibrium, is its natural price, determined independently of the relation of demand and supply. And how this price is determined is just the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken, e.g., a year, and they are found to cancel one the other, leaving a mean average quantity, a relatively constant magnitude. This had naturally to be determined otherwise than by its own compensating variations. This price which always finally predominates over the accidental market-prices of labour and regulates them, this “necessary price” (Physiocrats) or “natural price” of labour (Adam Smith) can, as with all other commodities, be nothing else than its value expressed in money. In this way Political Economy expected to penetrate athwart the accidental prices of labour, to the value of labour. As with other commodities, this value was determined by the cost of production. But what is the cost of production — of the labourer, i.e., the cost of producing or reproducing the labourer himself? This question unconsciously substituted itself in Political Economy for the original one; for the search after the cost of production of labour as such turned in a circle and never left the spot. What economists therefore call value of labour, is in fact the value of labour-power, as it exists in the personality of the labourer, which is as different from its function, labour, as a machine is from the work it performs.  ❞

Karl Marx

The Transformation of the Value (and Respective Price) of Labour-Power into Wages, in Capital Volume One

The statement that “the price of labour […] is its natural price, determined independently of the relation of demand and supply” was only possible under Marx’s hypothesis that “demand and supply balance,” so that “demand and supply also cease to explain anything.” So “independently of the relation of demand and supply” is a bit misleading; it actually means “when demand and supply balance.” More importantly, later on, to determine “this [natural] price which always finally predominates over the accidental market-prices of labour and regulates them,” Marx supposes that “a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken.” But this directly contradicts the hypothesis that “demand and supply balance,” with which he was able to declare the labor value to be “determined independently of the relation of demand and supply.”

So Marx has never been able to match this labor value to “value expressed in money” without having to combine mutually exclusive hypotheses. Nonetheless he presents them individually and uncombined, as they are separated by this passage: “And how this price is determined is just the question. Or a larger period of oscillations in the market-price is taken…” All he and Political Economy did to “scientifically discover” labor value was to compute an average price over some arbitrary period (here again the faith in the mathematical average). But the labeling of this average as the “natural price of labour” came at the cost of giving undue credence to the “independently of the relation of demand and supply” clause, effectively writing off demand and supply.

So, in contrast to Marx’s claim that free market value is lawless—unpredictable, incomprehensible, uncontrollable—we say that value in general is lawless—at least compared to an experiment that tries to determine the law that governs the answers of people asked whether a blue painting is blue or red. In fact, even Marx’s labor value, supposedly determined by only “labour time,” hides how lawless the complexity of its determining factors is. In Marx’s own writing:

❝ The value of a commodity would therefore remain constant, if the labour time required for its production also remained constant. But the latter changes with every variation in the productiveness of labour. This productiveness is determined by various circumstances, amongst others, by the average amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the degree of its practical application, the social organisation of production, the extent and capabilities of the means of production, and by physical conditions. For example, the same amount of labour in favourable seasons is embodied in 8 bushels of corn, and in unfavourable, only in four.  ❞

Karl Marx

The two factors of a commodity: use-value and value (the substance of value and the magnitude of value), in Capital Volume One

As with Marx, the more one tries to explain in detail what is more natural about their values, the more one is going to end up with stuff like “[value] is determined by various circumstances, amongst others, by the average amount of skill of the workmen, the state of science, and the degree of its practical application, the social organisation of production, the extent and capabilities of the means of production, and by physical conditions.” Whether the latter set of criteria should be more “natural” than another set of criteria, is, if you ask me, rather… unnatural.