Labor Theory of Value

[Caj]

How would one "test" the labor theory of value exactly?

[Geiseric]

Find out how much cheaper an item made by a sweatshop worker is than the same thing made by a unionised worker?

[NewLeft]

Find out how much cheaper an item made by a sweatshop worker is than the same thing made by a unionised worker?

The difference varies.. Under the market, the item by a unionised worker can actually be priced lower.

[Geiseric]

It might be lower depending on how much of an item is being bought, however the goal for profits ultimately chooses for the owner the sweat shop laborer after that commodity isn't being bought much more due to the Iron Law of Labor, which eventually diminished the union worker's purchasing power.

[28350]

How would one "test" the labor theory of value exactly?

You can't, it's a definition, and you can't test a definition.
Apparently.

[S.Artesian]

Find out how much cheaper an item made by a sweatshop worker is than the same thing made by a unionised worker?

Actually, no. In general, commodities made by organized labor are, per unit of output, contain less value, less labor time necessary for the reproduction of the commodity.

Price is the monetary expression, the phenomenal appearance of value, not value itself.

Cockshott has done some of the hard empirical work, correlating prices with actual labor times.

[ZeroNowhere]

You prove that capitalism exists, essentially. The labour theory of value, as Marx saw it at least, doesn't mean that individuals prices correlate with values, but is rather a necessary feature of capitalist commodity production as such.

[Geiseric]

Huh. well I was thinking that if a minimum wage worker in the U.S. makes five things in an hour, at a pay of 10 dollers, that makes it worth more than a worker in say china who made the same amount in 3 hours at a pay rate of maybe 50c?

[S.Artesian]

Huh. well I was thinking that if a minimum wage worker in the U.S. makes five things in an hour, at a pay of 10 dollers, that makes it worth more than a worker in say china who made the same amount in 3 hours at a pay rate of maybe 50c?

The comparison of the two does not prove the labor theory of value.

[Aurora]

It might be lower depending on how much of an item is being bought, however the goal for profits ultimately chooses for the owner the sweat shop laborer after that commodity isn't being bought much more due to the Iron Law of Labor, which eventually diminished the union worker's purchasing power.
Isn't the Iron Law of Labour one of Ferdinand Lassalle's concepts which Marx deals with in his Critique of the Gotha Program? or am i thinking of something else?

edit: Im wrong, Lassalle is big into the Iron Law of Wages. So whats the iron law of labour?

[robbo203]

How would one "test" the labor theory of value exactly?

As someone has already said you cant really do this since the nature of the theory is essentially deductive and abstract. Prices and values only equate in the aggregate but for individual commodities, prices and values will diverge for all sorts of reasons - like supply and demand imbalances for instance

Apart from that there is this point that value - socially necessary labour time - is something that only becomes apparent in the process of exchange - in the ratios in which commodities exchange - which cannot be precisely predicted in advance by measuring the actual amount of past labour embodied in them , assuming this was even possible. As Marx put it: "Social labour-time exists in these commodities in a latent state, so to speak, and becomes evident only in the course of their exchange.... Universal social labour is consequently not a ready-made prerequisite but an emerging result’ (Marx, K, 1981, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Lawrence and Wishart, London, p.45

[Geiseric]

Isn't the Iron Law of Labour one of Ferdinand Lassalle's concepts which Marx deals with in his Critique of the Gotha Program? or am i thinking of something else?

edit: Im wrong, Lassalle is big into the Iron Law of Wages. So whats the iron law of labour?

I meant the law of wages, my bad.