Romanow, Zbigniew2016-12-222016-12-221988Ruch Prawniczy, Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny 50, 1988, z. 3, s. 149-1620035-9629http://hdl.handle.net/10593/16755The concepts of value and price and the connection between those categories are important problems of economic considerations and disputes, both with respect to the essence of those concepts as well as to their role in the economy. The present article offers an attempt to investigate basic views of the representatives of various schools of political economy, with the attention paid to those aspects which might prove useful from the viewpoint of the rational shaping of the economic processes. Starting from the theoretical system of the classic English economy, the considerations are focused on theoretical problems of value and price in both explanatory and evaluative approaches. In particular, the author tries to prove a gradual disappearance from economic theories of the process of linking together prices and value in view of particular conditions of carrying out economic activity and in effect, in view of particular economic policy both in Western and Marxist economy. The considerations allow to say that the theory of value based on market price and the theory of value based on labour correspond with the stage of development when resources and goods were considered practically unlimited. However, we are more and more aware of the fact that it was only in the XlXth or partly XXth centuries stage of "abundance" and relatively little dangerous pollution of the natural environment that prices and their total level might be considered the reflection of value. The rejection of those assumptions and the recognition of not only relative but also absolute scarcity of the growing number of goods, the need of protecting them through prohibitive prices mark the end of the period of explaining prices exclusively in terms of the input of labour. One should therefore keep in mind that the growing degree of scarcity of resources will inevitably lead to the rise in their prices, i.e. to the economic impediment to their availability.polinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessArtykuł