Do leftists still believe in the labor theory of value?

[not a leftist]

If so, why?

[Ocean Seal]

Umm yes. Why not?

[not a leftist]

Umm yes. Why not?

Because it's basically been discredited for over a century, basically. So, you buy things based on how hard someone worked on them rather than what you personally value them at?

[jake williams]

Because the LTV isn't the silly mudpie strawman that the right wing conjures up about it.

The basic point is that you can't create things of value without labour. While it's true that Marx, Ricardo etc. would have a hard time predicting the development of modern robotics, and it's not abstractly unthinkable that we might eventually live in some sort of technotopia where we're just automatically given whatever we want at any given time by the 'bots, but it's not worth discussing in the forseeable or considerable future.

Capitalists can't produce without workers (and then, it's the workers "producing). You can't have a factory that just spits out things that we need without human intervention, never mind the fact that any such factory would have to be produced through human creativity, etc.



So, you buy things based on how hard someone worked on them rather than what you personally value them at?
0) No one thinks this.

1) Value under the Marxist LTV isn't determined by how hard some individual works, but by the (minimum average) socially necessary labour time required to produce it. No one would think that two identical products would be of different values because Joe takes longer to make his than Sally does to make hers. The point is if all factories on average require more or less person-hours to produce something, including inputs and capital costs, the value is going to be respectively more or less.

2a) Price is different from value.

2b) You're missing the point about social averages, and what is meant by "value".

[not a leftist]

The basic point is that you can't create things of value without labour.
You have a false premise already. "things of value" are what specifically? I value this pair of underwear I am wearing at 100 USD.

While it's true that Marx, Ricardo etc. would have a hard time predicting the development of modern robotics, and it's not abstractly unthinkable that we might eventually live in some sort of technotopia where we're just automatically given whatever we want at any given time by the 'bots, but it's not worth discussing in the forseeable or considerable future.
How is the relevant to value be proportional to the amount of labor? Are you insinuating that a technomagic produced good would have a value of zero?


Capitalists can't produce without workers (and then, it's the workers "producing). You can't have a factory that just spits out things that we need without human intervention, never mind the fact that any such factory would have to be produced through human creativity, etc.
This is an irrelevant truth, what does this have to do with labor determining value?

[Ocean Seal]

Because it's basically been discredited for over a century, basically. So, you buy things based on how hard someone worked on them rather than what you personally value them at?

You can chose what you buy, but the value of everything is based on labor. What do you advocate as value, and who exactly is responsible for "basically discrediting" LTV.


Because the LTV isn't the silly mudpie strawman that the right wing conjures up about it.

The basic point is that you can't create things of value without labour. While it's true that Marx, Ricardo etc. would have a hard time predicting the development of modern robotics, and it's not abstractly unthinkable that we might eventually live in some sort of technotopia where we're just automatically given whatever we want at any given time by the 'bots, but it's not worth discussing in the forseeable or considerable future.

Capitalists can't produce without workers (and then, it's the workers "producing). You can't have a factory that just spits out things that we need without human intervention, never mind the fact that any such factory would have to be produced through human creativity, etc.

But the LTV would still be true in this case. If labor becomes automated a good should become cheaper and if no labor goes into producing a good then we have communism which Marx and Engels predicted in a stage of human development.




You have a false premise already. "things of value" are what specifically? I value this pair of underwear I am wearing at 100 USD.

Look to see how many people value it the same way. Things of value would be material objects or services which are created or provided by the means of production to the desire of a person or people.




How is the relevant to value be proportional to the amount of labor? Are you insinuating that a technomagic produced good would have a value of zero?

Effectively yes. If it can be produced without any labor at all then it could be produced infinitely and therefore it is abundant. If a good is abundant then it has 0 value. How much would you value a grain of sand at if you were sitting on the beach?



This is an irrelevant truth, what does this have to do with labor determining value?

What it means is that the only reason that things have value is derived from the amount of labor that goes into it. Hence if nothing of value can be produced without labor then there is reason to believe that labor should dictate value. It is the one constant in all goods of value. Historically no other universal constant can be drawn to goods of value.

[dernier combat]

Your username; very insightful. As if we couldn't figure it out ourselves. Where's the creativity these days?

[Rooster]

I value this pair of underwear I am wearing at 100 USD.

You didn't value your underpants at $100. You bought them for $100.

[Kotze]

@not a leftist: Before you go on, please give a definition of what you think the labour theory of value is.

I also ask everybody else to stop flooding this thread and wait until the reply.

[Thirsty Crow]

You didn't value your underpants at $100. You bought them for $100.
Yeah, that's a basic illusion of some people out there, that they somehow contribute to the whole economic process in the "form" of autonomous consumers which autonomously value commodities.
It's understandable, given the social and psychological phenomena resulting from bourgeois rule.

EDIT:

I also ask everybody else to stop flooding this thread and wait until the reply.

Sorry, didn't notice this valuable suggestion.

Also, I'd like to point out something, as a methodological suggestion for this debate: it is necessary to distinguish the notion of value and attributing value as found in the discourse of ethics, on one hand, and in economics, on the other. It seems to me that the lack of ability, or willingness, to do so results in misunderstandings like "I value this pair of underwear at 100 USD".

[not a leftist]

You didn't value your underpants at $100. You bought them for $100.

No, I personally value them at 100 dollars. The price of them is much different. The provide me with 100 dollars equivalent of utility.


Effectively yes. If it can be produced without any labor at all then it could be produced infinitely and therefore it is abundant. If a good is abundant then it has 0 value. How much would you value a grain of sand at if you were sitting on the beach?

A few things: value is different from price. If everyone could have exactly what they wanted for no labor or time, then scarcity wouldn't exist and the price of everything would be literally zero. But outside of this, with the technomagic example I use, there would still be time it takes to get something to people and finite resources it takes to build. The resources have some sort of value to those who own it, who wouldn't transform it and sell it unless they received somethign of equal or greater value in return. Unless of course we assume this example isn't just some god who hands everybody everything they want.

And what is a "social average" and how is it relevant? Because it sounds to me like this is the classic psuedo-religious marxist mysticism that conflates philosophy with relevant economic fact.

[not a leftist]

I like how people think I am using a straw man by using price and transaction as a way to model the absurdity of LTV. How you "corrected" is fallacious because it assumes that everyone, if faced with "overpriced" goods, can simply make it themselves for the "true" value.

Anyway the labor theory of value assumes that the labor processes that the intrinsic worth of a commodity is derived from the amount of labor it takes, or "should" take to produce a commodity or "value-add" to a material to produce something "useful". My use of quotes is not me being a douche, it's because marxist and other anti-rational economic theories assume objective and concrete, even Keynesianists suffer from this, so don't feel too bad. "useful" "value-add" and "should" are all false concretes.

[Revolution starts with U]

I value my life. You can't put a price on it.

I don't think the LTV accurately captures value creation. But I think it is miles above the STV, which is just a cop-out.

[not a leftist]

Your life is a philosophical question, not an economic one :P

STV isn't a cop-out, it's the logical deduction from empirically observable axioms of individual action; that is, individuals use means and transactions to reach subjectively valued ends. If you disagree with this, try to disprove it.

[Revolution starts with U]

Your life is a philosophical question, not an economic one :P
And yet I still value it... imagine that. Looks like value is not an economic phenomenon, necessarily.


STV isn't a cop-out, it's the logical deduction from empirically observable axioms of individual action; that is, individuals use means and transactions to reach subjectively valued ends. If you disagree with this, try to disprove it.
I think that is exactly the problem with the action axiom; it is not falsifiable. I can no more disprove it than I could prove it.

I would love to see your proof that you can deduce STV from the action axiom. Mises tried, Hayek thought it was dumb. Can you do better? :rolleyes:

Try science next time, bro.

[not a leftist]

And yet I still value it... imagine that. Looks like value is not an economic phenomenon, necessarily.

This is a linguistics issue, how distinct concepts share words. It's just that the progress of thought and ideas has outpaced specific enough language


I think that is exactly the problem with the action axiom; it is not falsifiable.
it certainly is falsifiable, it just can't be falsified the same way a round earth can't; it's true.


I can no more disprove it than I could prove it.
But I just proved it


I would love to see your proof that you can deduce STV from the action axiom. Mises tried, Hayek thought it was dumb. Can you do better? :rolleyes:
source?


Try science next time, bro.
Bare assertions don't work on grown-ups

[La Comédie Noire]

STV isn't a cop-out, it's the logical deduction from empirically observable axioms of individual action; that is, individuals use means and transactions to reach subjectively valued ends.

The economy is not full of utility maximizing individuals who make rational choices on what they buy. The truth is the market is an indoctrination process that tells people what to feel, what to think, and as a consequence what commodities to buy.

[Revolution starts with U]

This is a linguistics issue, how distinct concepts share words. It's just that the progress of thought and ideas has outpaced specific enough language
anti-dialectics.com



it certainly is falsifiable, it just can't be falsified the same way a round earth can't; it's true.
Then do it. You stating it can be falsified contradicts every known scholar on the issue, including Mises.



But I just proved it
Wana run that proof by me again?



source?
You want me to source that Hayek wasn't a praxeologist? That's common knowledge bro. See: all of Hayek.

[jake williams]

Anyway the labor theory of value assumes that the labor processes that the intrinsic worth of a commodity is derived from the amount of labor it takes, or "should" take to produce a commodity or "value-add" to a material to produce something "useful". My use of quotes is not me being a douche, it's because marxist and other anti-rational economic theories assume objective and concrete, even Keynesianists suffer from this, so don't feel too bad. "useful" "value-add" and "should" are all false concretes.
I think you're probably being sincere, but you're still being pretty thick about it.

"Value adding" is a staple of bourgeois economics and it's odd to see you objecting to it.

The LTV does not base value on how much labour it "should" take to produce something - that would be absurd. Among other reasons because we all think it should take no labour to produce everything and thus everything would have a value, in this context, of zero. (Which, again, the point should be made, would not mean that things thus produced would not be useful to us - but they would have no value as commodities. We wouldn't be able to sell them, because they took no labour to produce and thus would be freely available).

The LTV (again Marxist, there are other LTVs) talks about how much labour it actually takes to produce something, not how much it "should". At any given time, for any given part of commodity production, there is an average level of labour required to complete it. So, it takes average workers X time to produce a widget. Workers who take much more time than X to produce a widget won't get hired to do it. Workers who take less time than X will tend to reduce the value of the commodity, because it will take less "socially necessary labour time" to produce.

Regarding "useful", this term only makes sense in practice. The definition of things as "useful" is a social process. Things are useful which people want and find uses for.

[ZeroNowhere]

Because commodity production by necessity involves the duality of abstract labour and concrete labour. A product is a value insofar as it is a product of abstract labour. It's pretty obvious stuff.


it certainly is falsifiable, it just can't be falsified the same way a round earth can't; it's true.A round Earth could in principle be falsified. A better example of something which can't be falsified in principle due to being true, other than popular philosophical examples such as bachelors being unmarried, would be the labour theory of value. I mean, I suppose that it wouldn't describe reality as such if capitalism were abolished and replaced with a system not based on generalized commodity production, but then, it is a historical theory, and as such wouldn't lose its validity as a description of capitalism.

[Viet Minh]

You need to be thinking in terms of macroeconomics, is some fat guy in a suit essentially betting on the stockmarket or selling insurance scams worth the many thousands more he makes than someone who physically works hard all day to produce something thats actually of value, eg food, clothes, even medecine or whatever?

[Sir Comradical]

Because it's basically been discredited for over a century, basically. So, you buy things based on how hard someone worked on them rather than what you personally value them at?

There's a difference between Adam Smith's subjective labour theory of value and Marx's objective labour theory of value. They're two different theories with the same name which is why you're getting confused.

Economic Theory of the Leisure Class. Nikolai Bukharin 1927 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1927/leisure-economics/ch01.htm)
No doubt Marx is an “extreme objectivist” in this sense, not only in sociology, but also in political economy. For this reason his fundamental economic doctrine — the doctrine of value — must be sharply distinguished from that of the classical economists, particularly Adam Smith. The latter’s labour due theory is based on an individual estimate of commodities, corresponding to the quantity and quality of the used labour. This is a subjective labour value theory, as compared with which Marx’s theory of value is objective; i.e.. Marx’s theory is a social law of prices. Marx’s theory is accordingly an objective theory of labour value, based by no means on any individual evaluation, but expressing only the connection between the given social productive forces and the prices of commodities as the latter are determined on the market.

[pluckedflowers]

I'm not particularly well read on economic issues, so I wonder what the actual alternative is to the labor theory of value. The "capitalists shit rainbows and commodities" theory of value?

[Sir Comradical]

I'm not particularly well read on economic issues, so I wonder what the actual alternative is to the labor theory of value. The "capitalists shit rainbows and commodities" theory of value?

Look up marginal utility. Basically commodities are given value based on the subjective preferences of individuals & commodities provide diminishing marginal utility to the consumer.

[Thirsty Crow]

No, I personally value them at 100 dollars. The price of them is much different. The provide me with 100 dollars equivalent of utility.

That's just irrelevant to any kind of economic situation. Compare the following: let's say you bought the underwear at the price of 30 USD. However, you say you value them personally at 100 USD. This is not an economic question, but rather a question of one guy thinking about his underwear and how much utility they afford. This is not an economic situation, and as such cannot be subsumed under any kind of economic analysis. Youtr subjective preference is irrelevant when ti comes to prices formation and other economic processes (note that this does not hold true when it comes to specific phenomena such as auctions or garage sales; here, in simple exchange, one could operate with such notions, but they are hardly the dominant form of economic activity).

One other thing: how to personally, mentally measure one's notion of equivalent utility?

[RGacky3]

No, I personally value them at 100 dollars. The price of them is much different. The provide me with 100 dollars equivalent of utility.


Food has much more value to most people than an ipod, yet it is not valued that way, why? Because the way things are valued now are only concerned with monied interests.

wihch is why the market calls for more ipods, while people starve, because people with money don't have food insecurity thus don't value it as much as those that do.


Anyway the labor theory of value assumes that the labor processes that the intrinsic worth of a commodity is derived from the amount of labor it takes, or "should" take to produce a commodity or "value-add" to a material to produce something "useful". My use of quotes is not me being a douche, it's because marxist and other anti-rational economic theories assume objective and concrete, even Keynesianists suffer from this, so don't feel too bad. "useful" "value-add" and "should" are all false concretes.

No its saying the added value comes from labor.

[Thirsty Crow]

Food has much more value to most people than an ipod, yet it is not valued that way, why? Because the way things are valued now are only concerned with monied interests.

But but but - I value my cheese (which I bought at 5 dollars) at 50 dollars, personally and subjectively ('cause it affords my utility equivalent to 50 dollars - I LUV my cheese!)
:D

EDIT: oh yeah, one more thing.
The fact that you value your underwear at 100 USD (bought at, hypothetically, 30 dollars) could potentially lead to irrationa economic behavior on your behalf!

Hypothetically, let's say that an acquaintance of yours, valuing your underwear at 60 dollars, wants to buy them from you at 45 dollars. If you were to be consequential in your own act of valuing, you'd have to refuse his/her offer since it ranks below your estimate value, which means that you'd be giving up the opportunity to get 30 dollars with which you could acquire the exactly same underwear (and be free to go on and value it again at 100 USD) AND to pocket the 15 dollars' difference.

[Kiev Communard]

No, I personally value them at 100 dollars. The price of them is much different. The provide me with 100 dollars equivalent of utility.

Your personal evaluation matters little to the company who sells these garments, as it defines its own price irrespective of the wishes of individual consumers, and, if there are no other similar companies with lower prices, you have to comply with it, without regard to your personal thoughts on the 'proper' price of the commodity. If things were otherwise, and marginal utility theory were true, there would be no price increases and inflation independent of the will of individual consumers, which is obviously not how it happens in real life. Besides, a lot of "subjective utility evaluations" are nowadays basically forced by advertisement and other consciousness manipulation, so they are not the result of consumers' free will, as you would have it.

[Kiev Communard]

This (http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/308/02/20101200_cockshott_nitzan_bichler_testing_the_ltv_ exchange_web.htm)discussion seems to be of much use with regard to empiric applicability of Marxian labour theory of value. I recommend it both to its proponents and opponents.

[Cleansing Conspiratorial Revolutionary Flame]

No, I personally value them at 100 dollars. The price of them is much different. The provide me with 100 dollars equivalent of utility.
Which isn't based upon upon their actual value from a Workers Production; You're engaging in Bourgeois price speculation and price-fixing that isn't based upon the actual labor that was required to produce the product. They're effectively worth the price of the labor involved, which you don't seem to be regarding.
http://perfyi.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/airbus-a320-lufthansa-revell-04267-1-144-792-p1.jpg

[Kiev Communard]

I would also add that, ironically enough, the provisions of marginal theory of labour could only be realized in the communist society, where the independent producers and consumers would evaluate the total social production from the point of view of its consciously conceived utility, not its profitability, as it happens under capitalist system. Until that time, though, the actual prices of commodities would be determined by their supply and demand (the latter itself is dependent on purchasing power, and thus is not detached from the larger relations of production), which will in turn be dependent on socially necessary labour, i.e. on human and technological capacity of a given society (you cannot have 'utility' or even demand for airplanes in the absence of previously existing airspace industry with its own organization and division of labour, for example).

[Thug Lessons]

Because it's basically been discredited for over a century, basically. So, you buy things based on how hard someone worked on them rather than what you personally value them at?
Please leave until you've read literally anything about the labor theory of value that isn't an uninformed neoclassical polemic against it, or better yet just leave permanently.

[Sir Comradical]

Food has much more value to most people than an ipod, yet it is not valued that way, why? Because the way things are valued now are only concerned with monied interests.

wihch is why the market calls for more ipods, while people starve, because people with money don't have food insecurity thus don't value it as much as those that do.

Yes but value is not equivalent to the subjective evaluations of individuals. Value equals 'socially necessary labour time' which means that value will not change unless the technology used to produce commodities decreases the 'socially necessary labour time'. Sure under certain conditions, a loaf of bread can indeed become more expensive than an iPod but that doesn't mean that the value of the loaf of bread has increased. All that is happening is that short-term prices are fluctuating based on demand & supply.

My question for marginal utility theorists would be to ask the following question; what stops prices from being completely arbitrary? Why is an iPod generally, better yet pretty much always more expensive than food? Clearly there's something that lies beneath its mere price (that thing is value).

[Veg_Athei_Socialist]

http://www.rationalskepticism.org/news-politics/could-someone-please-explain-to-me-t22393-20.html

[HEAD ICE]

value is subjective! your poverty is simply a figment of your imagination. all you need to be rich is a PMA :)

[Rafiq]

You have a false premise already. "things of value" are what specifically? I value this pair of underwear I am wearing at 100 USD.

'Things of value'? Things that people want or need, in whatever way. In Das Kapital, Marx specifically points out that if the commaditite is valueless, or unwanted, than so is the labor. So pathetic that rightwingers criticize Marx, think they have it all figured out, yet haven't even read the first couple chapters of his most important work.




How is the relevant to value be proportional to the amount of labor? Are you insinuating that a technomagic produced good would have a value of zero?

No, since it takes labor to create those machines, and the machines that create other machines, ect. ect. ect. It all goes back to human labor...




This is an irrelevant truth, what does this have to do with labor determining value?

Labor doesn't necessarily always determine the exact value of a product (I.e. A capitalist can sell his piss for a million dollars) but what it does is give something value. Without labor the value is Zero. With Labor, the value is set, but the person selling it can set his price.

[Rafiq]

No, I personally value them at 100 dollars. The price of them is much different. The provide me with 100 dollars equivalent of utility.


Again, moron, without labor the price is zero. You can fucking use your own labor to rip out your fucking ballsack, and sell it for sixty hundred thousand dollars. It doesn't matter.

Stop using strawman arguments

Labor gives value, but doesn't always determine the exact value that someone sells it for.

[Rafiq]

Well, good work guys :cool:

I don't think he's going to reply.

He literally just got owned by everyone before me.

[Leftsolidarity]

Maybe you should just read (at least) the first chapter of Capital. Also, Marx's "Wage-Labor and Capital" shows why.

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

Because it's basically been discredited for over a century, basically. So, you buy things based on how hard someone worked on them rather than what you personally value them at?

Sadly since the LTV uses the word "value", which people now, even in economics, associate with the personal "worth" people put on things, people like you get confused.

I'm vulgarising here, but the point isn't to identify how people assess the worth of objects, but to identify what makes things be less or more expensive when they are trying to be sold in a free market.

If you don't think the amount of labour that went into an object has an effect in determining how much it sells for, how else can you explain that airplanes sell for more than apples?

If you are to suggest that this is determined by supply and demand, then it would be inappropriate for you to advocate capitalism because clearly, if airplanes have exited for a hundred years, and still are millions of times more in demand than apples, capitalism is terrible at matching supply to demand.

[hatzel]

If you don't think the amount of labour that went into an object has an effect in determining how much it sells for, how else can you explain that airplanes sell for more than apples?

Well, one is considerably bigger than the other one, and has lots of electronic stuff in it...that is to say, that's hardly the best example we could think of here, considering they're so vastly different :)

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

Well, one is considerably bigger than the other one, and has lots of electronic stuff in it...that is to say, that's hardly the best example we could think of here, considering they're so vastly different :)

Well the things you mention surely only have economic significance in that they imply an airplane costs more to produce? Which was kinda the point I was making? Mabye i'm missing something?

[Kotze]

STV isn't a cop-out, it's the logical deduction from empirically observable axiomsIt's the other way around. A theory for estimating price ratios of goods that puts a heavy emphasis on production cost in physical terms is very much testable, whereas a theory that puts such a heavy emphasis on what goes on inside people's heads that it can explain every real outcome as well as any made-up outcome after the fact — by saying, "Oh the preferences must have been this or that" — is pure belief.

Whether you ask Adam Smith or David Ricardo or Karl Marx, they all agreed with the following: In a simplistic model where there are no barriers to entry for any craft and where there are no constraints of limited natural resources, that is, where people's time is the only limited thing, different goodies will tend to exchange in ratios according to the time spent producing them.

None of them believed that in the modern world with a detailled division of labour using increasingly complex machinery the price ratios of 2 goods would always be exactly equal to the labour time spent on producing them; and what's more, they all believed that there can be quite persistent differences to labour values for some things (like land). They all modified that simplistic little model with minor and not so minor caveats.

A rule for predicting tendencies is not falsified by coming up with a single counter example. Smoking is linked to cancer whether some solipsistic healthy chain-smoker in his 90s disagrees with that or not. Price ratios today correlate with price ratios yesterday, and also, though to a lesser extent, with price ratios from 10 years ago. It shouldn't be surprising then that price ratios of goodies also correlate with physical quantities of an input, say oil, that goes directly or indirectly into producing them. One would have to be insane to deny this. The interesting part starts here: The correlation hasn't the same strength for every input. The change in supplied quantity when demand changes isn't the same everywhere. Some stuff can be quickly produced, some stuff not so much. Some stuff can be stored easily, some stuff not so much. Let's think for a minute about what that means.

A: Honey, the economy is booming. There are job openings everywhere.
B: Tonight, you and me will do our best to increase the labour supply, baby!

A: Honey, it looks like we are in a recession.
B: Ah. Better put my unused potential labour time in the fridge for later, then.

There's also something more to labour values than explaining prices. There are some constraints on the economy that exist whether people are aware of them or not, whether they are well reflected in prices or not. Marx had also something to say about that. If anything, I would say that Marx underestimated the predictive power of labour time when it comes to prices.