Common criticisms of Marx's Labor Theory of Value

[turquino]

I thought this might be a good thread to compile some quick responses to the most common capitalist criticisms of the labor theory of value.

1. "When I find a diamond sitting on the floor of a cave the LTV says that it's worth very little because it took me almost no effort to find."

2. "If I work really slow, that means the amount of value I produce is higher."

3. "The LTV says that spending a long time making a mudpile will make that mudpile very valuable. No one wants to buy to pay thousands of dollars for my mudpile so the LTV must be wrong."

4. "Labor doesn't help ripen fruit on trees, but people value ripe fruit more than unripe fruit."

5. "Fifty years ago typewriters were valuable, but today people want computers instead and typewriters are pretty useless. This is proof that value is based on the preferences of the consumer."

6. "A farmer in China can spend a lot of time laboring and still produce very little food in comparison to a farmer in North America using a tractor, so this means technology produces much more value than work."

7. "There's nothing special about human labour. Animals do work, so they must be exploited. Robots do work, so they must be exploited as well."

8. "The amount of time it takes an artist to create a work of art has nothing to do with how much it will sell for. Some paintings sell for millions, and some for a couple hundred dollars."

[KC]

I suggest you read Chapter 1 of Capital. It acknowledges nearly all of these points.

[turquino]

These are my quick responses. I would appreciate it if someone could tell me if these are correct or not.

1. The LTV isn't interested in explaining flukeish individual finds. If everyone was finding diamonds all over the place, diamonds would be a dime a dozen. Because in society it takes on average a lot of work to find/mine diamonds, the price is higher.

2. The value is the average society wide. Working way below the societal abstract value is not producing more value, and thus not receiving a higher price.

3. Mudpiles have no use to anyone (no use value), so they aren't a commodity. If they were, the answer to the above would apply.

4. Someone needs to pick the ripened fruits. Assuming they are being grown in an orchard, someone needs to keep the fruit trees healthy.

5. Are typewriters actually worth less? I don't know, I think a new typewriter would cost about the same amount, and anyways improved productivity has lowered the labour value of them.

6. The tractor embodies dead labour. The farmer without the tractor is producing a lot more living labour, while the one with the tractor is using a lot of dead labour created by someone else. Technology itself can't create more value.

7. Human labour has intention, even slaves perform work with intention (though they don't have a choice in the matter). An animal won't plow a field without being harnessed to a plow and driven by a human. A robot is capital and is the accumulation of old human labour. It also needs maintenance and programming by people. Robots won't do things spontaneously (at least not yet!).

8. Original works of art aren't fungible (homogeneous) commodities, so the LTV doesn't really determine how much it will be priced at. But if someone went around making flawless copies of all these pricey paintings, I think the price would decrease to its labour value. (question: does this mean original art is parasitic because it's sucking value produced somewhere else in the economy?)

[KC]

I would highly suggest you at least read Marx's Kapital for Beginners, which is stickied in the theory forum, and probably also Capital Vol. 1 (start with Wage Labour & Capital and Value, Price & Profit, then read Capital) before you start discussing Marxian Economics with anyone.

It might also do good to read some of Hilferding's responses to Bohm-Bawerk's "critiques" although they are somewhat difficult to read (but they do sum up the Austrian school's criticisms of Marxian Economics and a valid response - i.e. decimation - to them).

[turquino]

Im currently too busy to do a good read of Capital. Reading Ch 1 itself is a dense and intimidating piece of writing. I plan to get around to it sometime, and encourage others to try to read it, but I think it's also important that everyone grasp some of Marx's most basic ideas so they don't end up making simple mistakes. I think the labour theory of value is essential for every aspiring communist to understand, even those who are only just picking up the manifesto and thinking about socialism. How can we talk about exploitation if we can't say anything about where capitalist profit comes from?

The capitalist critics are lazy and most of their claims about why the LTV is 'useless' have been addressed by Marx and Marxists after him. That's why we need to be on our toes and and not accept their claims unquestioningly.

[mikelepore]

7. "There's nothing special about human labour. Animals do work, so they must be exploited. Robots do work, so they must be exploited as well."

Probably an attempt by the writer to distract the reader away from the fact that there are exactly two inputs to all production: nature's raw materials and human labor. Everything else is the result of these two things. Therefore it is plainly silly to say that there is "nothing special" about labor.

The capitalist's cost of production may contain elements for animals and robots only because these things, unlike air and water, can be obtained only with human effort. If any person could merely wiggle a little finger to obtain a thousand horses or a thousand robots, then these things wouldn't add to the cost of production, and therefore the goods produced through the employment of these things would have little exchange value.

[mikelepore]

1. "When I find a diamond sitting on the floor of a cave the LTV says that it's worth very little because it took me almost no effort to find."

2. "If I work really slow, that means the amount of value I produce is higher."


***

"Some people might think that if the value of a
commodity is determined by the quantity of labour
spent on it, the more idle and unskillful the
labourer, the more valuable would his commodity be,
because more time would be required in its
production. The labour, however, that forms the
substance of value, is homogeneous human labour,
expenditure of one uniform labour-power. The total
labour-power of society, which is embodied in the
sum total of the values of all commodities produced
by that society, counts here as one homogeneous
mass of human labour-power, composed though it be
of innumerable individual units. Each of these
units is the same as any other, so far as it has
the character of the average labour-power of
society, and takes effect as such; that is, so far
as it requires for producing a commodity, no more
time than is needed on an average, no more than is
socially necessary. The labour-time socially
necessary is that required to produce an article
under the normal conditions of production, and with
the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent
at the time. The introduction of power-looms into
England probably reduced by one-half the labour
required to weave a given quantity of yarn into
cloth. The hand-loom weavers, as a matter of fact,
continued to require the same time as before; but
for all that, the product of one hour of their
labour represented after the change only half an
hour's social labour, and consequently fell to
one-half its former value."

--- Marx, Capital, Chapter 1

[mikelepore]

Because in society it takes on average a lot of work to find/mine diamonds, the price is higher.

Discussing diamonds or gold, etc., capitalist economics often points to "rarity". I find it helpful to remind people that mass is in the denominator. An expression for exchange value is so much of something per unit mass. For coal, there is this much necessary labor time per unit mass. For diamonds, there is that much necessary labor time per unit mass. Having mass in the demominator makes it true that the "rarity" that capitalist economics cites, and the labor intensiveness that Marxian economics cites, are different ways of saying the same thing. A crew of miners may dig all week and then what the mining company has to show for it is ten thousand tons of coal. A crew of miners may dig all week and then what the mining company has to show for it is three or four 10-carat diamonds. Therefore, to be rare IS to be labor intensive.

[Drace]

1. The value is measured in the market, which consists more then just a single individual. If everyone were to be able to just find diamonds on the ground, then it would be worthless. But since on average, it takes much labor to find a diamond, it is rare and valuable.

2. Again, the value is not measured by an individual. If everyone worked slow, price would become higher.

3. The LTV only talks about VALUE, not price which includes use value.

4. Labor is needed to harvest the tree..

5. Use value.

6. The food in China would be more valuable to the locals their then in North America.

7. Animals work for themselves, they do not have owners who take their earnings. Who cares about robots?

8. Art is to be viewed with use value. It is not a single commodity that is produced over and over again. Each art is its own item.
It becomes the same argument as saying that one wooden chair is worth as much as the other, given that they both took the same amount of labor.
Indeed not, LTV does not count for this, it simply leaves it for use value.