Labor Theory of Value?

[JPSartre12]

Hey comrades,

I've decided to stop reading just the excerpts and summaries of das kapital in other books and to actually get around to reading them in their entirety.

The whole concept of the labor theory of value is something that I'm having a bit of a hard time wrapping my mind around. Could someone do their best to explain it to me?

Thanks guys :)

[Ilyich]

Well, because nobody else has answered the question on this thread yet, because it is an important question, and because I myself might be wrong and want to be corrected if I am, I will try to answer. Mind you, I am not an expert on Marxian economics, I am only halfway through Capital, Volume I, and, once again, I could very well be wrong. I definitely would not recommend taking my answer too seriously as I am afraid I might mislead you. Okay, here I go.

Every commodity has two factors; it has a use-value (substance of value) and an exchange-value (magnitude of value). A use-value describes the usefulness of a product of labor. For example, a light bulb can brighten a dark room; a pencil can be used for writing. Both light bulbs and pencils therefore have use-value. Exchange-value describes the relation of one commodity to another. For example, a light bulb might be exchanged for ten pencils. As such, the exchange-value of a light bulb is ten pencils while the exchange-value of a pencil is one-tenth of a light bulb. Now, the question is ‘why?’ Why is a light bulb worth ten times as much as a pencil? The short answer is that it takes ten times as much socially necessary labor-time to produce a light bulb as it does to produce a pencil. What that means is that it takes a longer average time of human expenditure of work to produce a light bulb than it does to produce a pencil. A light bulb has ten times as much exchange-value as a pencil does because a human would need to work, on average, ten times longer to produce a light bulb than to produce a pencil. Exchange-value is therefore created by labor. By the way, Marx uses the terms ‘exchange-value’ and ‘value’ almost synonymously most of the time. There is a difference but, in a capitalist society, on the surface, it doesn’t matter. So, value, the relationship of exchange between two commodities on a market is dependent on the average time of human work that went in to creating each commodity. Price, by the way, is not the same as value.

Well, I think (I hope) that’s the basic explanation. I hope it helps. Could someone please correct me if I am wrong? Thank you.

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Illyich is basically correct, but I would like to expand on something he has said.

For a thing to have use-value, it must be socially necessary labor and, consequently, apart of the division of labor.

[JPSartre12]

Illyich is basically correct

Thanks guys!

Is there a concrete and quantitative way of determining of much 'labor' went into producing something?
I mean, if we're then considering that an item's value is related to how much time one spends on producing it, wouldn't it be to one's benefit to take as long as possible producing something, because that way it has more value?

I suppose that what I'm saying is that why don't we take the product produced by the lazier worker and consider it more valuable than the diligent worker, simply because the former took a longer time than the latter?

[Halleluhwah]

Thanks guys!

Is there a concrete and quantitative way of determining of much 'labor' went into producing something?
I mean, if we're then considering that an item's value is related to how much time one spends on producing it, wouldn't it be to one's benefit to take as long as possible producing something, because that way it has more value?

I suppose that what I'm saying is that why don't we take the product produced by the lazier worker and consider it more valuable than the diligent worker, simply because the former took a longer time than the latter?

That's why it's the amount of labor socially necessary to produce the article: Socially necessary labor is the labor required under the normal conditions of production in a given society, with the average degree of skill and intensity for that society. As for a 'concrete and quantitative way of determining...' labor is measured by its duration (time), with skilled labor represented as multiplied simple labor (unskilled labor with a coefficient). The difference comes from the labor required to acquire the skill.

Also, while the socially necessary labor-time is given for a particular time in a particular society, it is constantly changing as the forces of production (and therefore the workers' productivity) are revolutionized by capitalists in competition with each other.

[Blake's Baby]

The short way of saying that is it's average labour that produces the mass of price, because commodities compete in the market.

If there's only one person who can build a house (but it takes him 20 years) houses will be £50 million pounds each. If there are lots of people who can build houses, but it only takes them 2 months, houses will be £250,000.

A bricklayer is better at getting most of a house ready than, say a heart-surgeon, even though the heart-surgeaon is more highly trained (and in his field commands much higher wages than a bricklayer). So a house built by bricklayers that's finished in 2 months, is much better than a house that's built by surgeons and takes 5 years to finish and then falls down, even though those surgeons could have earned loads more by doing surgery rather than building houses.

That's what 'socially necessary labour time' means - it's not 'socially necessary' for someone to go to medical school for 7 years in order to train to be a bricklayer, it's not 'socially necessary' to spend 5 years building a house, etc. The price of a house assumes efficient production (it's been built by bricklayers, in 2 months, not by surgeons in 5 years) because it's competing against efficient production. No company publically says 'well, we're more expensive than our competitors, that's because we're shit and can't produce things as efficiently'. They try to get more efficient than average production, so they charge the average price, and keep the profit.

[Vorchev]

My understanding of Marx's interpretation of LTV is abstract labor corresponds to exchange-value whereas concrete labor corresponds to use-value.

The goal of socialism is to eliminate abstract labor because that leads to the economized quantification of the means of production, and therefore, commodity fetishism where people become obsessed with the maximization of profit. Quantification is abstract because, literally, math and measurement are abstract processes. There is no such thing as objective concrete numbers. Concretely speaking, numbers are always qualified in units.

[Blake's Baby]

That's about right, but I'm not sure that the introduction of the terms 'abstract labour' and 'concrete labour' into the explanation is making things necessarily clearer.

Socialism abolishes exchange-value, yes.