I could also say “The poor cannot be rich without the rich” and hold some sense of truth.
I don’t see why. The STV defines value as subjective utility. The LTOV introduces a new category, use-value, to represent utility. Value, otoh, it defines as something else–embodied socially-necessary labor-time–and in the process generates some interesting insights. Where’s the incompatibility, exactly? Try to give a real answer and not hand-waving, if possible.
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Labor has 0 influence on the value. The berries were valued enough to expend the labor to pick them up, and so they were. Value is the source of labor not the other way around.
The LTV has no real meaning at all. It attempts to find an objective value of goods, and goods are only valued subjectively by individuals. If you try to get an objective value of stuff, what you’re trying to do is to indirectly build the foundations of a centralized production system (who needs the market anyway?). Nevertheless, thinking as goods have some objective utility (like a million-dollar gadget is not as “useful” as a 2 dollar tool) can make you think about sociological aspects of capitalism that we shouldn’t ignore.
You’re ignoring the fact that labor-time may be wasted. If no one wants a given product, that product is worthless, no matter how much labor was spent creating it. Value is determined by the desires of consumers. The labor that went into creating the product may influence that desire, or it may not. I would love a hand-made watch. I would not want a handmade television.
That may (or may not) be implied by the vague phrase “socially-necessary”. LTV can’t precisely define what socially-necessary really is.
Precisely. JimmyJazz seems like a smart cat, and it’s starting to become annoying how he insists labour constitutes some sort of objective value.
Indeed, it is.
As far as I know, no one has ever claimed that the LTOV can explain the value of an individual commodity to an individual consumer. That “value” is purely subjective. However, the vast majority of commodities produced*, even today in an age of novelty items, are things for which there is a relatively steady demand. The demand for beef is not something that wildly fluctuates. On an aggregate scale, there is demand for beef that is not going anywhere. Beef has value. And therefore there is profit to be made in beef cows.
*not the vast majority of different types of commodities, of course, but the vast majority of the number of actual commodities produced.
Some people might be. Why does that fact stop you, personally, from mining the LTOV for any insights it might provide to you? There is no reason why it should.
I have sort of been waiting for someone to ask what these “insights” are that the LTOV lends, since I keep mentioning them in passing. But I guess no one is going to. What I would consider a big one, that I haven’t yet mentioned, is this: it explains how economic inequality is created and perpetuated through, to quote Ernest Mandel, “an honest-to-god act of exchange” (times several million, of course). Another, which I already mentioned in this thread, would be to explain why an airplane sells for more than a load of bread even in a country experiencing a famine.
No one needs to point out to me the things that the LTOV cannot do (and they are many). I’m perfectly aware of them, so telling me about them is a pointless exercise. It is also pointless to tell me what the STV can do, because I’m aware of that too. But to refuse to examine some influential theory for the insights it can lend, and to only look at it with an eye to “refuting” it, is either intellectual laziness or blind ideological dogmatism.
To say that demand for something like an automobile is “purely subjective” is technically true, and one could defend such a statement in an internet message board discussion. But it misses something rather large about reality. The automobile is here to stay, it is an extremely useful item, and millions of them will sell next year and every year for the foreseeable future. An automobile has objective value. Someone who doesn’t find any value in an automobile is the exception that proves the rule.
It takes an entire toolbox full of theories (intellectual tools) to truly start to understand human economic activity in its totality. I have not even claimed that the LTOV is the best tool in that toolbox, but it is a good one. LIke all theories, and frankly, especially like all good social theories, it is based on assumptions which do not correlate perfectly to reality.
The reason “inequality is perpetuated” is because of poverty traps like zoning laws, welfare, and public schools.
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Okay brah why don’t you just show us how the labor theory of value is applied to a circumstance.
Jazz, it it is obvious that we don’t agree as to what is the LToV. Please tell us your definition and begin your argument in favor of LToV from there, por favor.
Agreed. Demand is the source of value.
The reason an airplane sells for more than bread, even in an area experiencing a famine, is that people who aren’t able to afford bread aren’t the people in the market for an airplane to begin with.
You are misusing objective. Cars will sell next year because consumers will still desire them. That desire is why cars have value. The cars are not valuable because they are built; they are valuable because people want them to be built,
I agree in using/studying/etc. multiple tools. However, the labor theory of value is a useless tool. Labor has 0% impact on value. You asked earlier, what would happen if all labor stopped. The answer is, of course, everyone would die. The same thing would happen if all desire ceased. In the former case, however, things would still have value. People would still want things, but would be unable to attain them without labor. In the latter case, nothing would have value, and so no labor would be expended to get anything.
Value is the source of labor - people labor because they value the end product. Even non-existent things have value. It’s why authors get advances and companies spend money on research and development.
No one is going to because you are the only person in this conversation that thinks that the LTV adds any meaning. I’d say the onus is on you to advance a theory, instead of waiting for someone to show interest. Because that ain’t happenin.
You’re just adding meaning to a nonsense concept which has been refuted, and then attributing your perception of social justice to it as a root cause. I’m not trying to be insulting, but it’s completely not founded on anything real.
But it can’t explain all of the airplanes that are produced and not sold in a country experiencing a famine. It’s absolute rubbish. You’re attributing insight to a theory that doesn’t actually work or make any sense.
It can’t lend any insights. The theory is bunk. I am all for social justice and I stand in opposition to inequality which does in fact exist. But making up nonsensical theories of why that occurs serves absolutely no purpose.
Complete non-sequitur. It is not only technically true to say it is subjective, it is subjective. When you start arguing that logic conflicts with reality, that is when YOU step back and re-assess your perception of reality. Because if you can reason logic, and then can’t find that logic in observation, then either the logic is wrong (which you admit it is true) or your capacity to perceive, comprehend and relate is wanting.
It is meaningless nonsense. It has almost no value except to sort out in conversations like these, people who hold two opposing views simultaneously. That is known as doublethink.
I have no reason to reject the labour value other than it’s actual (lack of) truthfulness. if you believe it is compatible with subjective value, then you’re terribly confused.
This conversation has gotten a bit circular and frustrating, so I’m just going to reiterate one old point, make one new one, and leave it at that.
Value does not refer to the same thing in the LTOV and STV. The reason no one has refuted this yet is because it’s right. In the LTOV, Value refers to the amount of socially-necessary labor time incorporated in a produced commodity. Thus the statement/slogan that “labor creates all value” is true, but is in fact a tautology; value being defined in the LTOV as incorporated labor. To refer to utility, the LTOV introduces a new category: use-value. The STV refers to utility when it refers to value. Thus the equivalent concepts in the LTV and STV are Use-Value and Value, respectively. Not Value and Value. Please cite some authoritative source on the LTOV in support of your argument if you are going to contest this claim about how terms and concepts are used in the LTOV.
Secondly, another question for the deniers: Why does the price of a given type of commodity decrease, as the productivity of the labor needed to produce it increases, though the demand for it remains constant? The STV cannot explain this. Which is another way of saying that the STV cannot explain the central mechanism of economic progress through history. Incidentally, this is not a “flaw” of the STV, just something that falls outside its purview. But the LTOV helps quite nicely to conceptualize why it happens. In fact, to even make the statement that “the price of a given type of commodity decreases, as the productivity of the labor needed to produce it increases” is to implicitly invoke a labor theory of value (in stating an obvious truth).
What does “socially necessary” mean? What is “use value”? How does one “use” a red shirt different from a gray one and why is it “socially necessary”?
Because supply has gone up (if I am reading your question right).
I once had the same confusion you have, marxist use-value refers to the intrinsic properties of an object to account for usefulness regardless of the perception of a consumer but it is not a measure of value since it doesn’t necessarily include labor.
This is clear in the paradox of wheat vs poison ivy, according to Marx you can have use-value without having value but you cant have value without use-value regardless of the labor applied, therefore a field of wheat and a field of poison ivy should have the same value, using the same labor, if anyone sees the poison ivy as useful and that ultimately is up to the consumer.
Maybe someone more knowledgeable on marxist theory can explain it to you better.
And since that statement is false, the LTOV falls apart. Things are valuable before labor is spent to create and/or gather them. This is why the labor is spent in the first place. Things that may never exist are valuable, which is why labor is spent on research and development.
STV along with competition explains this perfectly - competition pushes firms to find ways to produce the item at a lower cost and still make a profit.
And since “the amount of socially-necessary labor time incorporated in a produced commodity” is always zero, the only value worth discussing is what you would call use-value.
Talk about polishing a turd.