3 Analysis by structuralism

3.1 Structure of a price

In this section, we examine prices as a ‘structure’ using structuralism. Previous researches have not analyzed prices or money as a structure and money theory has barely progressed since Marx’s value-form analysis.
Iwai (1986) examined Marx’s value-form analysis and indicated that money is realized using circular reasoning, which he called the mystery of money. Karatani (1993) considered Marx’s ‘salto mortale,’ and indicated that because money is a system of differences, price is therefore groundless. They argued form theories of money, reflecting their interest in the mystery of money. Here, we clarify that the core mystery of money in fact lies in the numeration of value.
By nature, magnitude of value cannot be measured. We can measure linen by a unit of length, such as a meter. We can measure iron by its weight, such as by the ton. However, value is measured across all types of properties, including linen and iron, using differing criteria such as usefulness, degree of desire, aesthetics, scarcity, and prestige. By nature, we have no unit that encompasses all these factors. Therefore, a certain quantity of linen can never be determined to be inherently equal to a certain quantity of gold. Although we believe that a market exchange is equivalent, equivalence is in fact impossible. Nonetheless, people easily perform market exchanges. How is this possible?
Past arguments from the structuralist perspective are not useful in this case. According to Saussure’s (1959) argument regarding language, bothsignifié and signifiant are structured by being articulated. Articulation is performed in an unconscious domain, and we use language without being conscious of such articulation. According to Lévi-Strauss, marriage is an exchange of a woman, and humanity’s incest taboo divides nature from culture. A prohibition rule serves to determine the range of kinship with whom a person can or cannot marry, and this prohibition necessitates relations with other groups to ensure marriages. We interpret that an articulation therefore exists that divides women we can marry from women we cannot. In both language and marriage, articulation therefore plays an important role in the foundation of structure. In contrast to these two examples, however, we cannot find such articulation in prices. We therefore conclude that articulation cannot resolve the issue of finding the structure of prices.
Equal value is theoretically impossible. What resolves this impossibility is not pursuing equivalent, but the fact that a price has emerged. Value is numerated through a market exchange. Although we are free to fix a price before bringing a product to market, such a price will remain a mere expectation if an exchange has not been made. Consider, for example, the case of an auction. Only when an actual transaction is finished does a price appear. A seller offers a price at which he can afford to sell. A buyer buys if he agrees with the price. The act of trading indicates an agreement, thereby determining a price.
It follows, therefore, that the common perception that prices are decided beforehand and commodities are bought by equivalent exchange is wrong. Numeration of value does not determine value objectively. Rather, numeric value emerges when a market exchange is made; it is practice. Numeration is realized by exchange, and we can exchange because value is numerated. Exchange and numeration have an interdependent relationship. Here, practice is an unconscious activity to make structure.
Then profit plays an important role at the determination of prices. Rather than pursue numerical strictness, a seller and a buyer should instead attempt to agree. A seller agrees because a buyer offers profit. If the price cannot provide profit to a seller, he can refuse the exchange. If both of them agree, an exchange is made. Although no numerical stringency exists, a seller gains profit, a buyer gains utility, the exchange is accomplished harmoniously, and a price appears. Anthropologists may call the profit invisible gift to sever the relations. No strictly equal value is determined at any point. Since a price appears only when an exchange is made, price can therefore be called performative. This mechanism is common in both the manufacturing industry and the distribution industry.
Market exchange is thus communication mediated by profit. As the need to communicate led to the emergence of language, the need to exchange yields the structure of a price. Although the structures differ in form, the structure of a price is also a form of communication between human beings.

3.2 Singular point of a structure

Prestructural value turns into structure when it acquires a numeric value at exchange. We refer to this point of conversion as a singular point of structure, as it marks the point where structure is generated. Increase in value at a singular point cannot be observed. As mentioned in the preceding section, value and profit added at exchange are indivisible and absolutely numerically unknowable. Only exchange as practice can be observed. Previous structuralist arguments have not contained any mention about a singular point that we are aware of, we thus attempt to explore the features of such a quality here.
  1. In a singular point, many processes occur simultaneously. Prenumerated value is a bundle of ideas. When determining value by money, goods are evaluated not only for their usefulness but also for their scarcity, utility, expectation of future demand, and so on. Furthermore, as this marks the point where profit is added, a price appears as an answer in which all requirements are realized, and goods can therefore be exchanged for money.
  2. A price appears only once, when a market exchange is performed. Although this step can be unclear because fixed-price markets are prevalent today, a price is nonetheless theoretically determined by each agreement between buyer and seller, and reevaluated for each exchange. Since the owner changes as a result of a market exchange, the same exchange cannot be performed twice. Consequently, numeration is an ongoing practice.
  3. The structure of prices is non-systematized. The shift to a structure, i.e., from value into a price, is not permanent. Price appears only at the moment of exchange, and then disappears immediately. Therefore, prices are performative, not systematized. Prices contain no element equivalent in Saussure’s langue . Similarly, market exchange does not construct social relations. This leads to freedom of the market.
  4. When determining prices, people refer to prices of similar commodities. In markets in traditional society, the equilibrium function to determine prices does not fully work, and prices are determined by custom in many cases. We consider this to repeat the exchange rate of a precedent transaction; this is also therefore a reference to prices. This reference to prior transactions stabilizes prices. If all players pursue profits, such as those assumed by economics, prices should fluctuate according to the individual diplomacy of sellers and buyers. A structure of references neutralizes such fluctuations.
  5. Value and price are incommensurable in the singular point. While value and price are discontinuous, there is ambiguous causality. We are not conscious of the discontinuity, and in our recognition the world is smoothly continuous.
  6. No absolute criterion exists for determining prices that can be determined with reference to a precedent. A precedent example, however, can itself be determined by referring to an even earlier precedent transaction. Prices are relative; no matter how far back in the past we may look, no original criterion can be pinpointed. This highlights the circular reasoning peculiar to structuralism. The reason that a dog is called a ‘dog,’ Saussure revealed, is arbitrary, and he avoided any argument beyond this. Saussure referred to this as the ‘arbitrariness of the sign,’ and it implies that the naming of words is groundless. In the same sense, a price is arbitrary too.
  7. The addition of profit by agreement means that prices are not a unit but a sign. Prices crucially differ from other units that humans use, such as length and weight.
  8. The singular point also poses a recognition problem: the retroactive causal recognition of added value. Calculating profit from ex-post prices, we recognize the existence of profit and consider what is really the effect as instead the cause. In such special recognition, the causality is reversed. This phenomenon can be considered as ‘liminality’: a concept of anthropology. Liminality is an in-between period of ritual, and one of the characteristics of it is that hierarchies are reversed (Turner 1969:166). Since from production to a market exchange, it is also an in-between period between a pre-structure and a structure, it could be regarded as liminality. In this suspended situation, it is supposed that we recognize the causality reversed. Given this concept, the singular point should be not a point but a period from production to sales, in which value is suspended.

3.3 Inability to grasp the economy correctly

During liminality, sometimes neophytes develop comradeship and egalitarianism (Turner 1969: 96). Such a condition as communitas is observed not at a factory or market places where economic activity is performed, but rather in ant-capitalistic social movements supported by the Marxism. It is interesting that ex-post speculation of the singular point compresses time and produces the liminal states. In addition, an experience in adolescence to read Marx can be a rite of passage. It is an imagined pilgrimage going back to the genesis of structure. Regardless of the way being correct or not, you can go on the pilgrimage, because the way is symbolism. However, the liminality will not be aggregated like the so-called millenarian religious movements(Turner 1969: 111).
In the real world, prices as structure emerge, and economy circulates. Then, value increases in a market exchange. Products are not priced prior to coming to the market. When a pre-priced product is priced for the first time, changes in price are unknown. We cannot know the increment of value increase at the singular point solely from prices after that singular point. However, it is necessary for buyers in an exchange to provide profit; through this means, ex-post profit increases, that is added value increases. This forms the basis on which all of capitalistic economy circulates.
From its inception, economics has dealt with the world as measured by prices. The world of prices is conformable as long as we can treat it numerically; therefore, it is suitable for analysis. Prices involve profit at exchange. In contrast, value is no more than an idea. Classical economists (including Marx) argued value as economy; however, it is numerically impossible for theory of economics to cross the singular point. Close to when Marx constructed his theory, neoclassical economics did not explicitly understand this limitation, and by establishing utility theory, moved the emphasis from the supply side to the demand side. This would prove to be a wise choice.
This theoretical conversion led neoclassical economists to concentrate on the study of prices. Consequently, neoclassical economists stopped crossing the singular point. The concept of the marginal revolution, significance of utility is emphasized, but requires conversion from value to prices. Thus, the Copernican revolution of economics was conducted unconsciously. This revolution brought evolution to neoclassical economics; by avoiding the singular point, neoclassical economics became capable of using mathematics.11Sraffa’s mathematical solution (Sraffa 1960) crosses the singular point. It is an important problem.
The numerically represented economy, however, does not correctly reflect the reality of the prestructural world, in the same way that the world grasped linguistically as a structure does not correctly reflect reality. It is impossible to perfectly understand the economy.
One of the reasons for the long-term difficulties in refuting Marxian theory stems from the fact that this theory crosses the singular point. Theory cannot mathematically cross it, because of the discontinuity of value. Marx crossed it. It is difficult for a theory avoiding the singular point to refute a theory that crosses the singular point. As a result, Marxian theory persisted long into the 19thand 20th centuries.
The fact that value increases in numeration reminds us of Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty principle’ in the quantum theory. Furthermore, it may remind some people of Gödel’s ‘incompleteness theorem.’ However, we should not confuse either of these with the arbitrariness involved in prices. A price is not a natural phenomenon but an outcome of human culture. Not understanding this point has long confused economists’ argument concerning value.