this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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A reminder that the labour theory of value is not a marxist concept. When people wave their hands around and say "labor theory of value isn't objectively true!!", they're shadowboxing a ghost.
Value != price
Umm... Thanks for that unnecessarily aggressive seeming and a bit incompehensible addendum, I guess?
I think it's more assertive than aggressive.
What part of my response did you find incomprehensible?
Sorry, I interpreted it as aggressive. Figuring out tone in text form is hard and all that. Sorry that I wrongly accused you.
Things I didn't get:
Marx hasn't been explicity brought up yet (at least not in my comment). Only implicitly in the original post. Again: thought you were attacking me and was like "umm... So what?"
I thought you meant me, since that was what I was basically saying. 😅
Now, that one wasn't even implicitly mentioned.
I hope you don't hold my misunderstanding against me.
I was certainly being critical, though it was unclear by your phrasing if you were saying what I thought you were. That's why I was using passive language.
True enough, but I assume the implicit connection your comment was making to the op was the reference to "your stolen labour value", which would be a marxist concept, and "labor theory of value" is commonly misused as a counterargument against marx's central critique of stolen surplus labor. Feel free clarify if I got that wrong.
Well now i'm confused. If 'labor theory of value isn't objectively true' isn't making an argument about the price of a commodity not being equal to the labor it embodies, I am not sure what you're trying to say by it.
A theory o value doesn't necessarily say anything about price. As you said: "value != price".
Then what do you mean by "the labor theory of value is not objectively true"?
It's an economic theory and therefore more to be understood as a model on how economics work.
The natural sciences have a hard core. The theory of gravity depends on how matter interacts in an objective, physical framework. Economic theories basically describe human interaction which are based on psychology and sociology. Therefore they depend on the societal context they are made in.
If you understand them as models that are tools on how to understand the world, they become more useful in political analysis (I know we are in a meme community here, but everything is politics and so on and so on...).
I do subscribe to many conclusions the labour theory of value and especially Marx came to. But I want y'all to remember that the theory is a mere tool for understanding and not a sacred, holy theory.
..... Ok? Why the neutral language all of a sudden? Yes, labor theory of value is an economic theory, which as a field of study is considered a 'soft science'. Are you trying to say 'all economic theories and models are not objectively true"?
What am I missing here? Why would that be worth saying in response to the OP? It really just seems like you disagree with the 'your stolen labor value' claim in the OP, and are attributing it to the 'labor theory of value', and dismissing it as a soft-science (as opposed to dismissing it because you disagree with some portion of the theory you've neglected to mention).
My hunch is that you don't feel confident enough in your understanding to make any kind of firm claim and are just dancing around making vague gestures toward 'labor' and 'value' definitions as a way of avoiding it.
I was trying to be understood a bit better.
Not explicitally, but yeah: models aren't used for "objective truth". They're used to model (i.e. simplify) reality to make observations and guesses for the future.
I feel like a lot of leftists think that understanding economics starts and ends with "capitalists exploit the labouring class", while not actually engaging with the subject matter. I guess most can't even explain LTV properly before getting mad at capitalists.
As I've written before: I agree with most conclusions of marxist analysis that I know and I probably don't even know half of them. But I think that political analysis should use LTV as a tool to understand the world and not the end of socio-economical disgussion (because that would ignore important parts of today's economy).
I don't. I wanted to remind people as to make political analysis not too easy by taking the mental shortcut of reducing current capitalism on the problems pointed out by Marx rendition of LTV.
I don't disagree. I also don't disagree with the atomic model of Niels Bohr when it comes to calculating electron potential. When it comes to observing e.g. electron spin, that particular model will probably fall flat. That doesn't mean I "disagree" with the model, though.
I'm not too confident in my economic knowledge, true. But I am quite confident in how models should be used in soft sciences.
Addendum: I'd like to kindly ask you to give me a little bit of benefit of the doubt. Otherwise, I'll just disengage due to that accusatory tone I'm getting from you being a bit exhausting.
My tone is reflective of my mistrust of your intention, I am sorry if that is uncomfortable.
On the contrary, I think applying theoretical models to current real-world economics is the only way to make sense of where theory and reality deviate. I don't consider it a mental shortcut at all. The only prerequisite for it being a useful exercise is to be explicit about where those deviations occur when they arrise. When theories are publicly dismissed wholesale without elaboration it can cause confusion about what the intent is, and there are plenty of those who *do * aim to drive wedges between those in the working class.
I would have found it more interesting if you had been more specific in how you think LTV was being misused.
How have I earned that mistrust? Do you think it's fair to continue that mistrust after my efforts to elaborate my point?
Pardon my tone, but: That's a nonpology. I can do without those.
I agree. My original "reminder" was to point out that deviations occur. The mental shortcut that I meant was to only take LTV into account when discussing economics.
I don't know if "misused" is the right term, but one example where LTV falls flat is that it doesn't model the destruction of value due to environmental pollution.
After watching the video you've been citing, i think i understand where you're coming from now.
You have to understand that absent the necessary context, 'LTV isn't objectively true' can come across as a troll. Because while nobody was actually mentioning LTV, the assumption that people in the thread were thinking it - and misusing it as a way to quantify some value for stolen labor - is a bit insulting.
Unlearning economics is taking LTV as a theory of 'exchange value' and evaluating it on economic terms. That isn't to say those critiques aren't valid (they are), but it does two things that might mislead someone into thinking leftists don't understand economics and mistakenly believe something that's incorrect:
He discusses Adam Smith as having developed the labor theory of value first, then discusses it as something new when he gets to Marx at the end of the video. It makes it unintentionally seem like LTV is a Marxist conception when even he mentions that it isn't
He starts the video discussing what 'value' is and how various scholars tried to define it, but then carries on with the rest of the video with the implication that 'value' is synonymous with 'economic value' and then evaluates Marx's theory by taking that as granted.
These aren't even a critique of him - he runs an economics youtube channel, it makes sense that he'd be evaluating these theories from that lens. But as you mentioned before, LTV (as Marx uses it) is useful as a political philosophy more than an economic model. Admittedly, I read Capital through the lens of metaphysics, so Marx's discussions of calculating the values of various things came across less as explicit proofs for determining objective value and more like a critique of the economic theories of the time. I can't speak to the intent of those assertions, but I can tell you that I (and many other) leftists do not evaluate labor-value-relations as quantifiable properties but as a way of evaluating the success and failure of capitalism to promote it.
You and I agree that 'value' as capitalism accounts for it, does not satisfy a idealistic definition of value; if economic value and abstract value were the same, there wouldn't be that contradiction that you pointed to (e.g. the creation of economic value coming at the cost of environmental pollution, ect). Similarly, I view the employee-employer relationship as fundamentally in-tension, and I see "stolen labor value" as an accurate framing from the point of view of competing interests.
Sorry for mistaking your intentions, it wasn't my intention to bully you.