Economics of Literature: Transfer of 'Worth' to 'Value'

문학 경제학 -사용가치에서 교환가치로의 전이

The two fields, economics of art and literature, tend to be put together as part of cultural economic studies; yet the former has been widely popular as compared to the latter. Economics of art has been known as part of social science which studies art economically. Similarly, economics of literature is likely to be an interdisciplinary study of literature and economics. Literature is suggested usually to reflect the economic base of a society as a form of its superstructure in view of classical Marxism; so, it is interesting to see social, economic activities, such as individual values and social institutions, income, price and opportunity cost, in a particular way of analyzing economic ideas in literature. Capital seems to have an innate property of self-expansion in literature; this property thus features actual economic life since in capitalism money is the universal value between persons and literary works. Specifically, the field of economics of literature starts with such ideas: economics of literature is part of cultural economics; and economics of literature deals with the economic value of literature. Putting interdisciplinary fields of literature and economics together, this study is to examine the economic value of literature in which Karl Marx talked about commodities with exchange value, use value, and fetishism. The exchange value is commercial worth, the actual exchange value of a publication; yet, the use value is innate worth, the aesthetic use value of literature. With commodity fetishism, profit seems not as the outcome of a social relation, but of a work- "reification" as the would-be Marxists suggest. As a commodity, the literary work appears to be able to animate life and power in reality. As a result, this paper asserts that social, economical activities in literature as we may apply to the study of economics of literature increase its economic value, implying commercial and innate worth, as the capital in the marketplace.