Labor theory of value

[abbielives!]

as i understand it some leftists also reject it, Micheal Albert for instance
ok so here is how i think it goes:

it is not enough to measure how much labor went into making something, it must also be useful
so you could put a lot of labor into building a steam powered motorcycle and have it have a very low value because no one wants it.

thoughts?

[bezdomni]

A commodity is, in the first place, a thing that satisfies a human want; in the second place, it is a thing that can be exchanged for another thing. The utility of a thing makes is a use-value. Exchange-value (or, simply, value), is first of all the ratio, the proportion, in which a certain number of use-values of one kind can be exchanged for a certain number of use-values of another kind.

Daily experience shows us that millions upon millions of such exchanges are constantly equating with one another in every kind of use-value, even the most diverse and incomparable. Now, what is there in common between these various things which are constantly equated with one another in a definite system of social relations?

Their common feature is that they are products of labour. In exchanging products, people equate with one another the most diverse kinds of labour. The production of commodities is a system of social relations in which individual producers create diverse products (the social division of labour), and in which all these products are equated with one another in the process of exchange.

Consequently, what is common to all commodities is not the concrete labour of a definite branch of production, not labour of one particular kind, but abstract human labour – human labour in general. All the labour power of a given society, as represented in the sum total of the values of all commodities, is one and the same human labour power. Thousands upon thousands upon millions of exchanges prove this.

As a result, each particular commodity represents only a certain share of the socially necessary labour time. The magnitude of value is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour, or by the labour time that is socially necessary for the production of a given commodity, of a given use-value.
-Lenin


So, as you can see; a commodity is not a commodity if it is useless.

[JazzRemington]

it is not enough to measure how much labor went into making something, it must also be useful so you could put a lot of labor into building a steam powered motorcycle and have it have a very low value because no one wants it.

We're confusing two definitions of "value." For the labor theory of value, value is synonimous with price and is an objective, empirical measurement. The general, and most wide spread, definition of value is a subjective, internal evaluation of the worth of a thing. When we speak about labor theory of value (especially Marxian economics), we mean value in the former instance.

Economists like to use the latter definition but they forget one thing: one cannot accurately and objectively measure it because 1) it is subjective and 2) it is internal.

But a commodity by definition has use. A commodity, as defined by classical and Marxian economists, is a good or service that has use-value and exchange value. (On a short aside, the fact that a service can be a commodity is slightly complicated and of no use to us in this discussion). It's use-value is the usefulness of it (i.e. it is either useful or not useful).

In other words, a commodity that is not useful to at least one person is not a commodity at all.

[KC]

For the labor theory of value, value is synonimous with price

This is false.

[JazzRemington]

Originally posted by wikipedia article on LTV
For example, some argue that values act as a center of gravity for prices. As counter-intuitive as this may seem to those accustomed to neoclassical price theory, some empirical evidence suggests values are a better predictor of empirically recorded prices than prediction by any other means.[7]

The footnote links to the paper, "The Empirical Strength of the Labor Theory of Value," which shows that market prices deferred from labor value about 0.105% in 1947, 0.090% in 1958, 0.092% in 1967, and 0.071% in 1972, with an average of 0.092%. I believe this amounts to essentially a statistical error.

[ComradeRed]

Well, technically, price is value expressed through money...see Das Kapital volume I chapter 3 section 1, or if you would like Chapter 1 section 3 subsection (d)...it deals with the "money form" or "price form" of value equivalence.

Just a technical correction ;)