The labor theory of value is the core Marxist economic principle, and it is incorrect.
This is probably a really dumb rhetoric (I’ve seen it a lot), but I’d to see a good explanation of how dumb it is. Is it like “Newtonian physics doesn’t explain black holes, therefore gravity DNE” or is it something else?
To take a step back, the user claims Marx was wrong about some details, but I’m presuming they’re not saying it for no reason, the unstated and implied conclusion is probably something like “therefore, we shouldn’t try socialism”.
At least I’m trying to follow the logic of if Marx was wrong about X, Y, Z, then [conclusion], but there’s only the claim that he was wrong about some random things as if anyone gives a shit if Marx was wrong about some obscure economics detail 100 years ago.
The empirical grounding for the labor theory of value has been conclusively proven since at least 1998 thanks to statistical work from Anwar Shaikh and Eduardo M. Ochoa using US input output data
To be honest you don’t even have to go that far, these libs literally don’t know the difference between use value and exchange value, or embodied labor and concrete labor
The gist of it is that marginal value theory shows that there’s an optimal level of employment within a particular workplace/job for maximizing value creating (basically, one worker is going to be spread too thin to be efficient, more workers increase efficiency but at some point adding more workers doesn’t increase efficiency). Liberals argue that Marx didn’t factor this in, plus some impacts capital reserve levels have on pricing, ergo labor theory of value is wrong.
This is a problematic argument on a few levels. One, Marx explicitly stated in Capital that particular businesses may have particular methods and ways of setting up their workflows that allow for greater value production that others, but that this doesn’t change the macroeconomic reality of value creation; he took it into account. Second, it’s used to validate the idea that we need a capitalist class to make those important efficiency decisions to optimize marginal values, but this is patently silly as most socialist economic platforms still have some sort of organizational oversight to examine these things, it’s a question of what class they report to. Third, Marx’s labor theory was more of an analysis of time as a limited resource for laborers than as a pure pricing determinant; Richard Wolff has talked about this. Fourth, it’s dressing up nitpicking as a refuting of the fundamental argument. Okay, Marx got some of the calculations wrong, that doesn’t make the whole theory invalid. Like, modern copies of The Origin of Species are full of footnotes stating which bits of Darwin’s arguments about particular evolutionary mechanisms have been overturned by subsequent biological research but it doesn’t render the theory of evolution wrong. Or to put it another way, if Marxist economics is wrong because of this nitpicking then all of Adam Smith’s works are wrong as well as he also used labor theory of value.
This is probably a really dumb rhetoric (I’ve seen it a lot), but I’d to see a good explanation of how dumb it is. Is it like “Newtonian physics doesn’t explain black holes, therefore gravity DNE” or is it something else?
To take a step back, the user claims Marx was wrong about some details, but I’m presuming they’re not saying it for no reason, the unstated and implied conclusion is probably something like “therefore, we shouldn’t try socialism”.
At least I’m trying to follow the logic of if Marx was wrong about X, Y, Z, then [conclusion], but there’s only the claim that he was wrong about some random things as if anyone gives a shit if Marx was wrong about some obscure economics detail 100 years ago.
The empirical grounding for the labor theory of value has been conclusively proven since at least 1998 thanks to statistical work from Anwar Shaikh and Eduardo M. Ochoa using US input output data
To be honest you don’t even have to go that far, these libs literally don’t know the difference between use value and exchange value, or embodied labor and concrete labor
The gist of it is that marginal value theory shows that there’s an optimal level of employment within a particular workplace/job for maximizing value creating (basically, one worker is going to be spread too thin to be efficient, more workers increase efficiency but at some point adding more workers doesn’t increase efficiency). Liberals argue that Marx didn’t factor this in, plus some impacts capital reserve levels have on pricing, ergo labor theory of value is wrong.
This is a problematic argument on a few levels. One, Marx explicitly stated in Capital that particular businesses may have particular methods and ways of setting up their workflows that allow for greater value production that others, but that this doesn’t change the macroeconomic reality of value creation; he took it into account. Second, it’s used to validate the idea that we need a capitalist class to make those important efficiency decisions to optimize marginal values, but this is patently silly as most socialist economic platforms still have some sort of organizational oversight to examine these things, it’s a question of what class they report to. Third, Marx’s labor theory was more of an analysis of time as a limited resource for laborers than as a pure pricing determinant; Richard Wolff has talked about this. Fourth, it’s dressing up nitpicking as a refuting of the fundamental argument. Okay, Marx got some of the calculations wrong, that doesn’t make the whole theory invalid. Like, modern copies of The Origin of Species are full of footnotes stating which bits of Darwin’s arguments about particular evolutionary mechanisms have been overturned by subsequent biological research but it doesn’t render the theory of evolution wrong. Or to put it another way, if Marxist economics is wrong because of this nitpicking then all of Adam Smith’s works are wrong as well as he also used labor theory of value.