Do you all agree with the Labor Theory of Value?

[white_wolf]

Basically the Labor Theory of Value states that the value of an object is related to the labor needed to make it. Marx did argue that labor was not the only source of value, but that the nature of an object held value as well, "Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much a source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor which is itself only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power." He also used his theory of value to help explain his views on exploitation: "The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion to the devaluation of the world of men. Labor produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity -- and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally." So do you all agree or disagree with the LTV?

[Teaser]

1. disagree

value is created by WHATEVER people decide to value. Labor is one thing you can choose to value, of course.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. So you do not believe in Classic Economics

I see.

[Riftaxe]

36. delete wrong post (nt)

[Teaser]

83. No, not really

I take a more post-modern/Nietzchean perspective on value creation.

Values define everything else, but their origin is entirely historical. They have no foundation outside of the fact that they have happened.

If enough people in a society accept the labor theory of value, then it's true, because it's what they value. If they don't, then it's not true.

[nadinbrzezinski]

94. Thanks for the explanation

it's just that when the theory of value come up, and people hear Marx... they think commie... never mind it is the basis for classical economics.

[alcibiades_mystery]

2. Marx was correct

But one has to distinguish between use value and exchange value. This is not to say that he's right for one and wrong for the other. It's correct for both, but in different ways.

You also have to distinguish between the labor of this or that person and labor power as what Marx called a real abstraction. Labor power is about capacities.

[elleng]

3. Value is surely RELATED TO labor needed;

there are other contributing factors, such as cost of necessary commodities.

[Riftaxe]

6. is "Labor" great then the value of materials?

or perhaps to state in another way, what happens to labor when the cost of materials + Labor has Greater value then the final product?

If you can come up with a solution for that, a Nobel will be among the least of prizes you will win :)

[Hannah Bell]

51. they don't get produced. duh. in a capitalist market, no one willingly produces at a loss.

[elleng]

67. Well, we agree!

P.S., not an economist, never studied the stuff, just 'applied' it as a fed govt bureaucrat!

[Hannah Bell]

34. the value embedded in commodities is created the same way.

[Riftaxe]

4. Rubbish and if you don't believe so

make me a diamond ring with just labor. No really, I could use a diamond ring :)

on edit: is the labor of a man who tries to make an automobile out of mud, the equivalent of a man who makes linen?

[The Magistrate]

7. Now That, Sir, Is a true DUzy...

You may refer to post No. 5 below for hints at why....

[Riftaxe]

16. I miss the DUzies (nt)

[white_wolf]

9. It is labor that mines the diamond from the earth,

cuts it and sets the stone. Labor is a necessary component of any product.

[Riftaxe]

19. Agreed on that,

and to not to presume the outcome of this thread, but it really comes down to who in the end judges the value of the labor + materials involved in making the final ACME widget.

In the end if the widget does not sell it always reduces the value of labor :( while the value materials themselves might remain relatively constant (when applied to widget 2.01)!.

[Snotcicles]

157. The diamond has no worth while it is buried deep.

It has great worth when it is brought to the surface. It has even greater worth when it is the only one.
Food has no worth if it rots unharvested. Yet food is the only thing of worth even if it's rotting, when you are starving somewhere else from famine.

[JackRiddler]

78. Remember, Real Men don't read Commie posts before lashing out in blind reflex.

It's not like your embarrassing misunderstanding of the original post could have been avoided by reading the first few sentences of it. Commies don't deserve to be read!

Now please show me the diamond ring that came into existence without labor.

[rug]

98. Make me a diamond ring without labor.

[The Magistrate]

5. Certainly, Sir, Labor Adds Value To Whatever It Is Applied To

Nor does the laborer ever receive in wages the whole value his or her labor adds.

There can be limits to this, of course. Labor that extracts ore from a mine, labor that processes it for smelting, and renders it into raw metal bloom, cannot add more value to the ore than the value of the metal it actually contains. Labor that shapes the metal into useful or ornamental forms can add value greater than that of the raw metal, unshaped yet refined.

[Riftaxe]

13. So if I laboriously take a sledge hammer

to a 80" LCD TV and proceed to reduce it to its basic parts, I have added value? :evilgrin:

assuming the definition of labor is time and effort... :)

[The Magistrate]

18. Ah, So You Simply Confuse Labor With Vandalism

The term does not simply mean the expenditure of calories in muscular exertion.

It is quite possible to increase value by destruction, of course. If, say, one buys a piece of land on which there is a building, with the intent of constructing a new building on the property, the labor of destroying the existing structure adds value to the property, by clearing the way for new construction. The labor involved in constructing the new building adds value both to the materials assembled into the building, and to the land on which it is erected, taken as a whole property.

In some circumstances, simply destroying a mechanism may add value: the mechanism may be unuseable for lack of power, or spare parts, and some small value may be acquired from its raw materials....

[Riftaxe]

22. This is not based on my own *cough* relative experience

with home repairs. So I will ask you first for your definition of labor.

Not all labor leads towards an end that is efficient, proficient or even a sane goal:P The beauty of labor can be seen as the end product of Art, after all there is no rational reason to make a sculpture but it is very labor intensive.

[The Magistrate]

24. Labor, Sir, Is Human Effort Expended To Alter The State Or Position Of Some Object

That it may be inefficiently, incompetently, or even irrationally conducted in some particular instance does not alter the general case, which is that labor is applied to objects with an intent to increase their value, by altering their state or position to one conceived to be more desirable than their initial condition.

The reason people brindle at the flat statement of labbor's role in adding value is that it exposes the sham involved in pretending that the profit of owners of capital derives from anything but paying less for labor than the value labor produces.

[Riftaxe]

28. That is perhaps the most succinct definition

I have ever seen if you drop the part about increasing value. Increasing value would be rational labor, and if the world applied only it to increase value, it would be a fairly bleak place!

It is a human invention that leads "unprofitable" labor to become profitable, which is something you have left out of your follow up paragraph there. Does paying a profit to a farmer for corn that he could not realize in the market so that it can be used in ethanol which is less efficient then gasoline reflect the true value of the labor involved in growing and harvesting the corn?

on edit: feeling a bit snarky, but is any politician worth what we pay for his labor (I know in NH we pay our legislators $100 to much for what they deliver)

[The Magistrate]

33. Invention Is Labor, Sir

Whatevedr the farmer receives for the corn, it will be less than corn-factor purchasing realizes from its further sale and processing.

[Riftaxe]

37. Passing up the opportunity to move this to a intellectual property debate....

If an artificial price is paid for labor, that labor is overvalued and indirectly impacts those who perform the same labor.

I not saying we humans are not a perfidious lot by any means, hence we create things like regressive subsidies.

[The Magistrate]

40. Over-Valued Labor, Sir, Is Merely a Euphemism For More Than Needed To Barely Sustain Life

Someone can just about always be found who will do it for subsistence wages, and the system can be rigged to render such persons plentiful.

[Stuckinthebush]

85. Magistrate!

This is the first post I've ever read from you in which you forgot to use sir or ma'am. Sir, you are slipping! :)

[jmowreader]

133. Maybe...

If the 80-inch LCD TV in question was used only to play Fox News broadcasts, destroying it could only add value.

[notesdev]

8. In part yes in part no

Statement: the value of an object is related to the labor needed to make it.

It can be. Or it might not be. What I value may be different than what you value.

For example, I have cats; you may have dogs. Cat food isn't very valuable to you, and dog food isn't too valuable to me. But making one is about as labor-intensive as making the other.

Value is ultimately subjective. Perception and circumstances play a huge role. You may jump out of your shoes to get the latest iPad, but the exact same device has zero value to someone with no skill with technology nor desire to learn or use it. A piece of fruit may be a snack to you, but it may be literally priceless to a man on the edge of starvation.

This is ultimately why top-down technocratic economy management can't work - because the proper calculation of value is subjective, and there's no way even a computer program, let alone another flawed and limited human being, is going to accurately make those judgments in real time for millions of human beings, no matter how well such a program would be designed.

Marxism is a dead end, economically, for the same reason all centralized command systems are ultimately incompatible with humanity. The underlying reality is that human activity is organic, not mechanical, and as a result it is far more fluid and dynamic than any static mechanism can account.

[Zanzoobar]

10. All value is derived from demand.

No demand, no value.

[provis99]

17. ding, ding! You've got it.

A man can spend months laboring to make the finest shit pie in the world, but in the end, it's only a shit pie if he can't sell it.

On the other hand, a work of "art" that takes all of five minutes to make can be worth millions of dollars eg. the infamous Voice of Fire painting, worth 1.8 million
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_Fire

[The Magistrate]

21. It Is True, Sir, That If There Is No Demand For What Labor Produces, It Cannot Be Sold

But that is not quite the same thing as stating it has no value. The thing is analogous to the distinction between mass and weight. An object has the same mass on the earth as on the moon, but an object weighs less on the moon than on the earth because of the different gravities pulling on it, and in space, where no gravity applies, it is weightless entirely, though it still has mass. Thus, a well-wrought knife is still an object of greater value, of greater immediate utility, than a pile of taconite pellets and charcoal containing amid their dross a wright of iron and carbon equal to that in the steel of the blade, and retains this superior quality regardless of whether, at some p;articular moment, a person wants to exchange money for the things.

[Zanzoobar]

23. We are not speaking in metaphysical terms, but economic

If you have another meaning, it is lost on me. A well wrought knife only has value where a well wrought knife is demanded by the circumstance.

You may value your baubles as you wish. If you demand it has value, then it does to you.

[The Magistrate]

26. It Is not Metaphysical, Sir, To State A Knife Is Of More Immediate Use Than A Pile Of Ore

Value is utility; value is not money price.

[Zanzoobar]

27. To you it may have value.

I have no use for it, thus it has no value.

[The Magistrate]

29. You Will Not Pay a Price For It, Sir; It Has Value

[Zanzoobar]

30. So we must regress to discussing terms.

Does your bauble have economic value?

[Riftaxe]

31. Like all things it comes down to definitions,

Now if everyone would agree on those to start with it would be a much easier world.

[Zanzoobar]

32. I should have found it necessary to qualify every iteration of "value" with 'economic".

It seems we must qualify all remarks with such specifics.

[Riftaxe]

38. If we all started from the same frame of reference

it would take away half the fun! I find the most fun and learn the most in finding out how people come to their definitions/points of view :)

[justabob]

42. yes and my own

One of the things I do when I have time is needlepoint/petit point. I do miniature oriental carpets, and they take a really long time to draw out and complete plus $60-70 worth of materials. I will NEVER be able to sell them for a price to cover even minimum wage for the time of production/tedious nature of the work. I *might* be able to get a retail mark up on the cost of raw materials, but that doesn't begin to cover the labor involved. They are undoubtedly cool things, but basically unsellable without finding the right person/people. It is frustrating... I have a stack of them. :)

[Hannah Bell]

52. how miniature are they to take $70 worth of materials?

[justabob]

74. well, 11x14 inches for most, but they vary

pretty small for a carpet.... they end up being roughly Barbie-scale. the little skeins of cotton yarn are $2 bucks each and it takes 25-35 of them, plus the canvas which is usually about 5-7 dollars. I also use Sharpies to draw the design out on the canvas. If I went to a store and tried to buy an oriental rug kit with pre-printed canvas and wool yarn included at a needlework store it would cost HUNDREDS of dollars. It is insane.... needlepoint is not a cheap hobby. I have to do a lot more tedious work counting and mapping it out, but I can create whatever I want without having to pay through the nose. :shrug:

[Hannah Bell]

114. wow. so could you make something cheaper than the same thing ready-made just

taking the cost of materials alone into account?

[justabob]

123. well

In terms of what materials (canvas yarn and sharpies) cost, yes. I can produce something cheaper than if I bought a preprinted canvas (assuming I could find one), and yarn to fill it in, but it takes me hours to get the design on canvas, and the color coverage isn't as good as if it were pre-printed (unless I am super-diligent). In theory, I could draw out canvases and sell them to a needlework shop for someone else to buy, and probably make some money, but I do make mistakes with my trusty sharpies, and have to refer back to my chart when it comes time to actually do the stitching. It doesn't matter if I get one grid square off and have to go over it with another color on my own pattern, but I can't really try and sell them to others unless it is a really easy pattern and I get it right all the way around. Sigh.

[Hannah Bell]

140. thanks for the information. your work is very nice, btw (saw the picture).

[justabob]

156. thank you Hannah! nt

[Capitalocracy]

72. But that's because the economy is broken.

People are not paid enough, or they would be able to pay you a decent wage plus materials and other costs for these items, if they wanted them. But our economy is broken to the point where the only things people view as "affordable" are mass-produced by exploited workers earning extremely low wages (cents an hour, in many cases) and then sold for many times that amount, but still at a very low price. In many cases, labor makes up less than 2% of a price, yet those prices are very low because workers are exploited in very poor countries often with no semblance of democratic governance, and certainly no collective bargaining of any kind.

If you can find a way to market your product, you should charge a lot more for it. Some people will actually be more likely to buy with a higher price, because it creates a perception that it's a premium product... which it kind of sounds like it is, although I'm not sure exactly what it is. What is a miniature oriental carpet, what does that look like?

[justabob]

75. it is true

A while back I talked to a few different people about marketing them and/or making something else out of them (bags, like using the rugs to be the flap on a messenger bag/tote or anything besides a pillow or wall hanging). What I learned is that the pressure from India and China reaches all the way into our hobby/craft niches. It is not a project I started with ideas of making money, but when times got hard, I looked into it because they *are* pretty cool.

Miniature oriental carpets are exactly what it sounds like.... 11x14 inches, roughly, and they are all different types from different geographical regions.... Persian, Caucasian, Kazak et al I will post a photo for you. Essentially, they would be lovely carpets for your home if you were the size of a Barbie or GI Joe doll. :)

on edit.... can't find the cord to upload a photo right now

[Capitalocracy]

77. Yes, the pressure definitely makes its way into crafting.

I occasionally make chainmaille jewelry... kind of a similar concept, a much smaller version of something. And people want to pay a price that doesn't reflect the work that goes into it. It's all because everyone's squeezed by the low wages, high cost of living and health care costs, and being used to cheap products coming in from exploited nations, like I mentioned above.

That and a lot of crafters tend to undervalue their work. They see it as a hobby and just sell for little more than the cost of material, or they just say OK, here's the cost of materials plus minimum wage for the time I worked, there's the starting price, and then it gets bargained down or other costs cut into it. Really, a price should reflect slightly more than the wage you want, leaving room for other costs, and a certain amount needs to be added to the price for the inherent risk... ie, so that you can continue making a living making the products even assuming that not 100% of them will be sold.

I get kind of mad at how low people set their prices in crafting, because it's like they're saying yeah, I'm lucky enough to have other sources of income and do this for fun, therefore anyone out there who might want to make an actual living doing this can't! Haha!

[justabob]

79. yeah that does sound very similar

What you said is all very familiar, especially the pricing of hobbyists(?). My carpets would have to sell for 1000 dollars or more to cover minimum wage. They take about a month to do, working diligently 30-40 hour weeks.... after the several hours of drawing it out by hand. Sigh.

[Capitalocracy]

82. wow, I really want to see one of these things

and I thought my crafts took patience!

So how much do they actually sell for?

[justabob]

86. they don't sell

If I tried, I could probably find someone to buy one framed nicely for 300 or so, but I am unwilling to devalue my time so much, and the cost of framing nicely would eat up even more money. So I have a stack of these things that are lovely, but essentially unsellable unless I can find that crazy Barbie collector who wants to buy new carpets for the Dream House. hahaha I even thought about doing some in Barbie colors for that market, but that is just too much. :)

I am still hunting the cord for my camera. I will post a photo here or pm you with one whenever I can get an image in this machine. I am curious about your chainmaille as well.... we do both do incredibly tedious crafts. :D

[Capitalocracy]

89. Well, I'd love to make a living doing it if I could...

because I could listen to a lot of leftist podcasts while I do. Would be pretty cool.

Here's a couple of examples, small size images so as not to disrupt the thread here...



Not great photos, but we have a better camera now, so if I decide to sell them I can take better ones in the future. I haven't been able to so far because I'm in kind of a weird situation... I'm stuck in Argentina at the moment (married an Argentine woman, don't meet the financial requirement to sponsor her immigration to the U.S.) and I don't have a credit card, so I can't open an Etsy account, plus a 50% export tax complicates things a little bit. But I might try it at some point in the future if I can find a way.

The only mini carpets I'm seeing on Etsy are less than $20... are these the same things you make that take a month? :freak:

[justabob]

93. wow! really beautiful work

I love both those pieces!

Um, no idea what they sell on Etsy.... probably not the same work I am doing. I am not a slow worker... a month is pretty fast for the detail involved. The materials cost me 60-70 dollars. I will have to go look there. I do not have the international complications you do, but I am BROKE until my job starts up, so anything that requires debit/credit card is out. It is incredibly frustrating.

[Capitalocracy]

103. Actually, it requires a credit card, but not an investment

I mean, I think there might be a dollar or so listing cost, but it's mostly a backend percentage after sale.

[justabob]

95. photos for you

Not best quality photography, but some Saturday morning snaps of my work:





one in progress:

[joshcryer]

97. Wonderful work!

Thanks so much for sharing. :hi:

[Capitalocracy]

120. Quite impressive.

I can see how it would be difficult to find a buyer who is ABLE to pay what you deserve for it, but it's certainly impressive. This is definitely a premium product and would have to be marketed as such to make it viable.

[justabob]

124. thanks!

I do it because I like it, and will continue to do so, but my life would be a whole lot easier right now if I could sell some. :)

[Raksha]

141. You do beautiful work.

[Silent3]

135. If a beautiful hand-crafted item takes two 8-hour days to produce...

...and the materials used took another 16 hours to produce, and 20% of your own labor goes to pay taxes, then, if you are paid a comparable wage to the craftsman and the materials producers, it would take a full week's worth of your labor to be able to purchase that hand-crafted item, not even accounting for other possible expenses that typically increase the costs of goods, such as shipping, storage, advertising, losses for uncollected payment, etc.

Not to disagree with the idea that there are plenty of underpaid people in this world -- of course there are -- but the fact that not everyone buys hand-crafted goods, or feels like they can afford to, is not in-and-of-itself a sign that the economy is broken. If there's a cheap mass-produced item that you can purchase for what you earn in half a day, and a hand-crafted item that would take you a week's wages to buy, you may well settle for possibly lower quality in order to save so much money, and happily so.

If you can afford to buy that hand-crafted item with what you earn in four hours, then you must necessarily be earning a lot more money than the craftsman. Does that mean you are overpaid or the craftsman is underpaid? If the craftsman is underpaid, and we try to increase his wages to match yours, that can only be done by making his hand-crafted products much more expensive. Suddenly you and other people are going to be far more tempted buy mass-produced items instead. The craftsman, deprived of willing customers, ends up doing no better financially, possibly doing much worse, than before our attempt to equalize wages.

While I understand the sentiment of wishing good craftsman and artisans had an easier time making a living, and wishing that more people would decide to own smaller numbers of hand-made items rather than piles of mass-produced merchandise, there's a problem of simple arithmetic here: On average, one hour of one person's labor cannot possibly purchase goods and services that take more than one combined hour of other people's labor to produce. In fact, since there are always inefficiencies, wasted labor that ends up producing no useful goods or services, the average wage from an hour's labor must necessarily have a purchasing power that falls fairly short of what it would take to buy goods and services that require a full combined hour of other people's labor.

Modern material wealth is utterly and completely dependent on the multiplying effects of cheap energy and mass production techniques.

[coalition_unwilling]

104. My wife is a (plastic) artist (still undiscovered) and I know whereof you speak. The

prices she can currently charge for her work in no way can compensate her at anywhere close to the amount of time she spends creating the art.

Personally, I think my wife's art is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but her art is also 'unsellable without finding the right person\people.'

I comfort myself with a couple lines from Emerson's "The Rhodora": "Tell them, dear, if eyes were meant for seeing\Beauty is its own excuse for being."

[DireStrike]

90. I think that would be what Marx called "use value"

Distinguishing the tiny nuances in different types (or aspects?) of value is much of the challenge in understanding Marx' value theories.

[freshwest]

12. I'd like an consideration based not only the time expended by people, but by animals, plants. etc.

How long it takes an aquifer to replenish itself, animals to come to gestation or slaughter, plants to grow, trees to grow, etc. It would bring an appreciation of the environment that makes all of this possible. An example is the increasing use of bamboo instead of wood, using less resoource intensive food sources, etc.

The presumption that you can really place an just monetary value on anyone or anything that is alive is faulty. There would probably be no firm and fast measurement, but it would have to do with respect and not money. Which is really what the worker needs, compensation that indicates respect.

The market philosophy, that everything is a commodity, is the reason billions starve and ecosystems are destroyed. We're fast running out of choices on how to keep our living heritage on a planetary scale.

Other than that, I ascribe to the value earned view of labor as the question of justice due to ownership of capital and resources is likely to continue to give power to the wrong system.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. FYI Marx didn't start that. he's the other bookend

of Classical Economics. The other bookend is Adam Smith. Ricardo refined it.

And the whole discussion on labor in Das Kapital is a polemic on a couple chapters in the Wealth of Nations.

When seen in the classic continuity it makes even MORE sense.

And it is funny to see many a "capitalist" reel when Marx is mentioned, never mind Smith started that.

[JackRiddler]

81. Aristotle, actually. And no doubt long before him, because...

it's like, the most obvious thing in the world.

All wealth originates in nature. All value is produced by labor. Even the apple that drops on its own won't land in your mouth when you want to eat it, you're going to have to bend over and pick it up. Of course, apples as we know them were laboriously cultivated from tiny versions by many, many generations of our ancestors. Someone's got to plant, care for and maintain the orchard. Someone's got to pick them, carry them, lay them out for sale, make pies out of them.

It's so obvious and constant, from minute to minute and year to year, that only with labor can you get a use-value out of nature, and that labor plus resources employed are the source of all values we exchange, that you'd forgive people for treating it as a forgettable triviality. Except that there are those who opportunistically want to pretend otherwise so as to devalue, exploit, suppress those who labor. And those who do not gain but still buy this line of bullshit that wealth springs from the minds and acts of lone great individuals who should rightfully own and dispose over the world.

[Starry Messenger]

15. Agree.

[DonCoquixote]

20. like all theories

It can apply to many things, but not all.

For example, at one time, Aluminum was considered a "precious metal" along with silver.
Now, after they figured out how to mass produce it, it is just a useful metal,
just as Gold was just a useful metal to the Aztecs, not anywhere nearly as valuable as jade.

[defendandprotect]

25. kr -- I'd have to read that over a few more times ......

but the value of a human cannot only be his/her labor --

and imo the only real work is craetive work of one's own --

[Capitalocracy]

35. A mixture.

A living wage labor cost provides a necessary minimum value. If you can't get that price, then it's not productive to sell that item in that market. And the fact that everyone is trying to save on labor costs is destroying our society.

After that, there can be other factors... what people are willing to pay, investment value, sufficient value to offset risk, etc. But nothing should cost less than a living wage labor cost for all workers involved, and a living wage should be enforced by the state for all things sold, both domestically produced items and imports.

[napoleon_in_rags]

39. Change the word labor to "energy", and I agree.

Joule per Joule, gasoline does the work of men for pennies an hour. But the core principle holds, the real utilitarian COST of something can be determined by the labor (energy) needed to produce it. Of course, COST and value aren't the same either, but they obviously converge.

[Hannah Bell]

41. and how do we get gasoline? and the machines that gasoline runs?

"energy" does nothing for human beings without their first mixing their labor with it.

[napoleon_in_rags]

43. Labor is far less important than external energy sources in our society.

Back when people spend all their time tilling and harvesting the fields by hand, human labor was everything. But about 2000 man hours of labor puts together the tractor that does 1,000,000 man hours of work in a fraction of the time by the power of oil. The only thing that makes people worth while in this setting is the intelligence with which we work, which machines don't have. The physical laborer was commodified yes, but then he was replaced with an actual physical commodity, a machine. The arc of our modern civilization is toward replacing the mental laborer with a machine, computer systems. The darkest future for us isn't being commodities, its not being commodities at all, its being useless. At that point its all about who controls all the machines.

[Hannah Bell]

44. you don't get it.

[napoleon_in_rags]

45. No, you don't get it.

Labor doesn't drive your car. It doesn't heat your home. It doesn't power the computer you're typing on.

[Hannah Bell]

46. nor could "gasoline" or "electricity" do any of those things without labor.

historic labor & present labor, mental & physical labor.

no, you don't get it.

[napoleon_in_rags]

47. Its like a spoiled rich woman saying "I worked hard for this fur coat"...

"I worked hard, because I walked out to the store, and I looked for hours, and I picked it out and carried it home"

Yes, you had to do that amount of work, but the MONEY to buy that fur coat that you had in your pocket is what got it for you, and that money represents a whole lot more work than walking to the store. Of course the tractor doesn't drive itself, but directing the vast energy to plow the fields by driving a machine is like walking to the store, compared to the actual millions of man hours of work that is being accomplished by the oil. So the actual work that's being done in this world is largely being done by a physical commodity, something which can be owned. And it follows that real empowerment for people means controlling the production of their own energy, through local wind and solar. That's the real revolution of our time, IMHO.

[Hannah Bell]

49. you don't get it at all.

[The Magistrate]

50. This, Sir, Is Like talking To Someone Who Thinks Ice, Water, And Steam Are Different Things

Labor has mostly been done throughout history by physical commodities which could be owned, people and other animals mostly. Substituting oil for slaves and beasts of burden does not really change the equation. Labor is required to produce petroleum energy, that is to make it accessible to the machines it is finally consumed by; labor produces the machinery used to extract it from the ground, to transport it, refine it, ship it to market location, labor searches for and locates the stuff, and labor wields the machinery that extracts and transports and refines and markets it. Money is nothing but a sort of crystallized form of labor, that can be turned into most any commodity or service one might desire, and cannot exist or have the slightest value without labor on both sides of the exchange it mediates. The two 'local' items you close with are very labor-intensive things; modern wind-mills are very high technology, requiring advanced manufacturing facilities, and the same is true of the most efficient modern solar generators.

[napoleon_in_rags]

118. Its true they remain connected, but you can't ignore the changes:

If you look back in time, you had an era where the majority of humans did was food production, out in the fields. In this setting, if the majority went on strike, food production immediately stopped. Then machines ingratiated themselves into the process, one person drove the tractor that did the work of 1000, and the rest went to work in the restaurant that served the food, making tractor parts, that sort of things. NOW when the majority strikes, if the tractor owner doesn't, he can still bring food to market at least for a time, albeit without the witty comments of the waitress. The value of labor was TRANSFERED from agricultural workers to the tractor, and the workers had less power.

The next transference of power away from labor (in the US anyway) happened with ending industrial jobs, moving workers into the even less critical "service economy", where everybody is basically a waitress. Now you can't even shut the tractor down by refusing to make parts. But in the big picture this is a small step, because its mostly empowering Chinese labor.

The third and largest step of devaluing human labor comes with information machines integrating themselves into mental labor the same way machines integrated themselves into physical labor. Once we are all working through "the network" to do our jobs, all you need to do is record our actions in terms of input output, and you have an ocean of training data for artificial intelligence. The witty waitress can now appear on the flat screen and make jokes when you go to the food machine, but she isn't human and won't strike.

So you see, the arc of our society has been moving toward a culture of total dependence and leaving labor without a lot of power to do anything. Its not necessarily a conspiracy, its that Joule for Joule gasoline does the physical work of men and for pennies an hour. So human physical labor is devalued. Job by job, information workers are being displaced by machines that do the same computational work that used to cost $20 for pennies. So the bottom line is simply that he who has the joules has the power. If you want to want to talk about empowering individuals, you have to talk about how individuals are going to get energy. Otherwise you've simply taken your eyes off the ball.

[The Magistrate]

125. It Does Not Change A Thing, Sir, Nor Does It Change That Labor Adds Value To Its Object

And that profit measures the degree to which laborers are paid less than that value.

[napoleon_in_rags]

131. What you refer to sir, is the incredible shrinking proletariat.

Its a myopic view that shrinks the idea of what labor is down to the desired group you want to see. If a group of people sells umbrellas in Arizona for $1 a piece and somebody transfers them to Washington where they sell for $2 a piece, then that $1 profit is the reward of moving a commodity to an area where it is more valuable then where it was produced. It is the reward for the labor of market research and umbrella transport. But blindness to this labor is historically politically convenient, it allows a leader to shrink the "workers", the proletariat, down to a group of political supporters. No clearer example can be given then Lenin's actions directly after the Bolshevik revolution, when he couldn't get congress to agree to his programs and couldn't win any election, so he declared a "dictatorship of the proletariat" which defined the 25% of voters that supported him in the elections as the proletariat and proceeded to overthrow the democratic majority and place this small minority in charge over everybody. This is the incredible shrinking proletariat that made the Soviet union a feared totalitarian state run by an elite: Its a myopic view of labor that ignores the forces that lie behind most of the production in a nation, which in this day and age are external fuel sources.

[The Magistrate]

132. Let Me Restate the Definition, Sir: Labor Is Human Effort To Change The State Or Position Of Objects

You may wrestle with Lenin's ghost on your own time, it has nothing to do with this discussion, or with my comments.

[joshcryer]

62. I believe the ultimate outcome is not local wind and solar.

Those are highly labor intensive technologies, which require regular upkeep, even if we had machines to do the upkeep, it'd still require supervising labor (until we have strong AI of course). The more likely outcome is space based solar power, a grid that is on 24/7 and powers the entire world. We could go off and blow our civilization up, the solar facilities would still happily beem down energy for hundreds if not thousands of years (assuming they could repair themselves, which would not require strong AI in this instance because of how simple they'd be and how wear and tear would be engineered around unlike a wind turbine or a solar field on the surface).

[napoleon_in_rags]

109. I agree with your assessment of ultimate outcome

You're right, that's probably the most likely thing...Not necessarily space based, but energy sources that are centralized and controlled by people far from us. This is what's being advocated by some authors, that really normal people don't have much to do with clean energy, its really the next breakthrough at MIT that will save the day. And what you say is true, there are large benefits to such structures.


But I also see a dark side to this. We know that energy is what has created this civilization, and it follows that he who controls energy also controls civilization. So really, in the spirit of spreading out power, I do think the BEST solution is to have people producing energy as close to home as possible. Yes, this is suboptimal scientifically, but I really think its optimal politically.

[Capitalocracy]

73. You know a lot of rich people hire professional shoppers

to go out and buy their fur coats for them.

[joshcryer]

60. Correct.

[Hannah Bell]

63. figures.

[joshcryer]

59. Humans are high trophic energy users, the energy our labor contributes (100 watts or so each)...

...pales in significance to the energy that our various goods and services consume. Absolutely pales.

[alcibiades_mystery]

105. By "labor," Marx meant energy

Marx refers to "labor power." He means the capacity to transform the state of things to meet particular needs. That includes pulling ore from the earth as well as stitching together baseball caps. Labor power is a real abstraction, in Marx's terms. It is abstracted from this or that kind of labor.

[napoleon_in_rags]

107. All I'm saying is a real assessment leaves it unseparable from energy.

Its true labor is required to take ore from the ground and make steel from it, but labor is not sufficient to do that. You need the energy source to melt the steel. If you don't have that, then you can't do it.

[alcibiades_mystery]

110. That's all true

But Marx didn't ignore it. The difference is the one between constant and variable capital. It's certainly a point of contention in Marxist theory (so, for example, Marx's "Fragment on Machines" refers to what he previously called constant capital as "the general intellect," which becomes an interesting issue in postindustrial economies). But let's not pretend that Marx was so stupid as to think that people could melt steel with their eyes, or build machinery out of mud. He is focused on human labor power because that is the kind that is exploited, in his view (it is variable). In any case, any machine you use to melt steel (together with its energy source) was only made possible by previous labor anyway; it is what Marx would call "dead labor" frozen in the machinery or the pipeline, or whatever. There is always a translation mechanism for energy flows, and those translation mechanisms are the result of (human or animal) labor power. Solar panels don't grow from trees, so to speak, and you'd need somebody to pick them even if they did.

But the follow up your observations would be to go back to many of these debates in the late-1930's, when other Marxist theorists made the same point. If you're interested, you should read Bataille, whose distinction between restricted and general economy has everything to do with energy sources, how they're channeled, and how they're restricted.

[napoleon_in_rags]

121. I am interested. Do you have a more specific link?

you should read Bataille, whose distinction between restricted and general economy has everything to do with energy sources

So this is Georges Bataille you are talking about? I think I once read a dirty book he wrote, I didn't know he did political theory.

[alcibiades_mystery]

126. The Accursed Share vols 1-3

The books on eroticism and religion actually deploy the same principle.

[napoleon_in_rags]

127. Interesting. Thanks for the info, will check out. nt

[Hannah Bell]

116. no, he didn't.

[alcibiades_mystery]

119. Hmmm

Cogent analysis.

:eyes:

[Hannah Bell]

139. i didn't realize 'analysis' was required.

"labor power" in marx's analysis is specific to human beings. it's not general "energy".


"By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description." <1>

"Apologetic economists... say:... labour-power, then, represents his capital in commodity-form, which yields him a continuous revenue. Labour-power is indeed his property (ever self-renewing, reproductive), not his capital. It is the only commodity which he can and must sell continually in order to live, and which acts as capital (variable) only in the hands of the buyer, the capitalist. The fact that a man is continually compelled to sell his labour-power, i.e., himself, to another man proves, according to those economists, that he is a capitalist, because he constantly has “commodities” (himself) for sale. In that sense a slave is also a capitalist, although he is sold by another once and for all as a commodity; for it is in the nature of this commodity, a labouring slave, that its buyer does not only make it work anew every day, but also provides it with the means of subsistence that enable it to work ever anew." - Marx, Capital Vol. 2, Chapter 20 section 10 <4>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labour_power

[alcibiades_mystery]

150. I didn't say otherwise

:shrug:

The distinction is between this or that specific human labor and the capacity to transform. The "real abstraction" is the abstraction of specific labor (say, stamping a license plate) and labor power as the capacity (or energy). If you read my posts above, you'll see that I never made the claim that labor power was not about human energy, but it is abstracted from any concrete deployment. The distinction I'm making (and, indeed, Marx made) is between abstract energy and concrete skill, not between human labor and energy in general.

[Hannah Bell]

151. "energy" isn't specific to humans & as several posters were claiming human labor

was irrelevant because of oil, etc. you can understand why i press the point.

[alcibiades_mystery]

152. I see how you misunderstood my intervention, yes.

:hi:

My bad for being unclear.

[The Magistrate]

153. Glad To see You Two Worked That Out, Sir....

[Common Sense Party]

48. No.

Next?

[CTyankee]

53. It has become more and more evident that Marx is spot on. He predicted exactly what

happens in economic meltdowns (such as our recent one) to workers in a capitalist state.

[mmonk]

54. Demand determines value.

Associated costs and values of production are not always congruent. That is my opinion.

[quaker bill]

56. Demand and relative supply determine price

the efficient or inefficient use of labor determines supply. Something that is broadly demanded but plentiful and produced with little labor will generally have a low price. There are abberations to any rule of thumb. Labor can be spent in a manner to produces little or no profit. Labor can also be utilized so efficiently that supply exceeds demand and the value of labor declines.

[Sadena Meti]

61. Potatoes and Bread

Historical example. A blight hits the potato crop. Price on potatoes remains more or less constant, there just are fewer about. But the price of bread goes up as it is being used as a substitute for potatoes. Now, the poor can't feed themselves.

Under the Labor System of Value, the price of bread would have remained constant, and all would just have to live with a little less.


BTW, have you heard that the price of corn tortillas (the staple food) in Mexico has gone up significantly because of all the corn being exported and diverted to bio-fuel? Lovely.

[joshcryer]

68. I'm not sure about that example, check out Giffen goods:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good

It's not really something that actually ... happens.

[Sadena Meti]

71. It did happen, I just can't cite the era or country, the lecture was so long ago.

[coalition_unwilling]

111. Classical economics would predict that, if a blight hit the

potato crop but quantity demanded of potatos remained constant that the price of potatos would have to rise (shifting the potato supply curve left and steepening its upward slope). In other words, the price of potatos would not remain constant, unless demand for potatos decreased.

What your "historical example" (not sure which history it references) alludes to is that, faced by higher prices for potatos, consumers will seek out alternatives to potatoes, causing bread's new demand curve (also shifted lefward but with a steepened downward slope) to seek out a equilibrium point at a higher price along a given supply curve.

Unless potatos are used to make 'potato bread' and no wheat is available, in which case consumers can switch to sawdust, causing its price to rise :)

[The Magistrate]

138. Economic Theory, Sir, Had Little To Do with What happened In the Irish Starvation

Save as laissez faire doctrines influenced official policy from London in more lethal directions than might otherwise have developed.

Potatoes were not much in commerce; they were mostly grown by people who ate them, or by landlords who fed them to their own livestock. Tenant farmers in Ireland had little contact with money; they paid their rents in grain, and lived on the potatoes they grew to one side of the grain. It hardly mattered what the price of bread might have been, the people whose food supply was wiped out by the blight had no coins. Rent was pitched so close to the actual production of cultivated land that there was no margin of grain which might have been consumed, or sold for cash, available to tenant farmers. The grain they raised for landlords, and the livestock who were normally fed from potatoes, were simply exported from the country, at good profit to the landlords. Meanwhile people starved to death, by the scores of thousands.

[coalition_unwilling]

158. I was not aware that we were discussing the Irish Potato Famine(s). The

supply and demand curves I referenced in my initial post derive from the field of microeconomics. The Irish potato blight and resultant suffering and death seem to me more a function of macroeconomics (how a given national economy works or fails in the aggregate), and not so much because of any weakness in classical economic theory at the microeconomic level. (The moment you said that 'potatoes were not much in commerce,' you were as much as suggesting that classical economic theory with its abstract supply and demand curves would not be a useful tool for understanding, much less solving, such a colossal societal failure. Seems like only poets and satirists like Jonathan Swift understood at the time what was really going on.)

Still your post underlines how absolutely vital it is that abstract economic theory constantly be tested against empirical reality. Any time a hypothesis fails the test of empirical reality, that hypothesis should be revised or its premises closely examined and altered or adjusted.

[Paradoxical]

55. Yes.

[Sadena Meti]

57. Part Labor Theory of Value part Utility System of Value

It can take the same effort to extract two metals from the ground. Both have use. But one is a non-corrosive conductor, very useful in electronics and technology. The value of the second metal has to be higher because it is of greater use.

I'm talking about gold by the way, but only in its industrial utility not its monetary value, which is fictional.

[joshcryer]

58. No, LTV is an archaic attempt at objective value, I consider ETV to be more relevant today.

Before the industrial revolution LTV made sense, objectively, but with the advent of industrial technology, it has become moot. Energy is the only objective criteria for value, since all value derives from energy (it did even per-industrial, but it's hard to see the connection then, since labor was the source from which all human value derived).

In a global highly technological society where energy is distributed equally among all, labor has no value, because goods and services come at zero marginal cost. One need only look at any "copyright discussion" here (where there are two camps, one saying copyright is derived from the labor of the creator, and if you infringe on that copyright you are devaluing their labor; no, it's the opposite way around, when you copy something without forced recompense you are rendering the labor valueless).

[Hannah Bell]

64. babble.

[joshcryer]

65. Worthless.

[KittyWampus]

69. So a painting by a five year old is of equal value to a Picasso if they both spent X hours painting?

This is a great discussion!

[joshcryer]

70. Yes. They're both equally worthless.

[Hannah Bell]

102. no, not according to marx.

[BOG PERSON]

115. according to marx, art has no value because it's irreproducible

a picasso print has value, however.

[xchrom]

66. Recommend

[kentuck]

76. Yes and more.

As Lincoln said, labor creates all capital. Of course, the rarity of the labor needed and the rarity of resources also reflect the value of an object. For example, if you have a car which can be fixed by only one mechanic in the world, then his labor will be of higher value.

The Labor Theory of Value is different from the debate about the value of labor vs capital. If you have a million dollars and you want to double your money by building a manufacturing plant to put people to work making a product that people want, the question then becomes, how much is your capital worth vs the labor needed to build the plant? Should labor share in the capital created after the building is finished? Or should all profits go to the owner of the original capital? In the capitalist system, it is assumed to be the latter.

After all, if labor did not build the plant, the capitalist would not be able to double or triple his money. So what is the value of labor? Why should the capitalist pay $50 an hour when he can get someone to build it for $10 an hour? Labor cannot escape the law of supply and demand.

etc..

[eallen]

80. No. Value is contextual. The labor theory of value cannot explain....

The labor theory of value cannot explain network effects, the adoption curve, or many other aspects of how products actually are valued by consumers. It cannot explain why the second instance of something sometimes is much less valuable than the first, and sometimes more valuable. It cannot explain why a new product that lacks some feature Y may be worth only half as much as the one that has it, even though it takes only 10% more labor to add it. The labor theory of value cannot explain why Beta lost out to VHS, OS/2 lost out to Windows, or why Symbian is losing out to Android.

Marx was much better in his factual analysis of capitalism than in his deontic analysis. And went off the rails in prescribing solutions.

:hippie:

[JackRiddler]

87. Value is assigned by mental systems of value, it is true.

We decide what we value, and how much value we assign to it, and on a big scale it adds up to collective, anonymous processes not necessarily under any one person's control. (One's personal preference for Beta could have made little difference in stopping VHS, unless of course you were the sole banker for both, in which case you might have made a big difference.) But no economic value comes into being without labor. Value originates in nature, but only with labor can it become anything we can use and exchange. A labor theory of value doesn't automatically mean that the same labor time expended on two different things makes the two things equally valuable for exchange on a market. Start with the unavoidable reality that nothing gets value in the first place without labor. Even pet rocks have to be picked up and packaged to sell. A labor theory of value hardly rules out understanding the other mechanics that you point out also operate in a complex economic system. Labor is simply the unavoidable necessity for all economic value, the fundamental creative unit (assuming nature as a given).

By "economic" I'm allowing that there's value in a sunset, and that watching it isn't labor time.

[eallen]

96. In that sense, you have the Labor Theory of Everything....

True, "no economic value comes into being without labor." The problem is that that statement doesn't really say anything about economic value in particular, but is more a generic statement about the human world. No beer is drunk, without human labor. No child is born, without human (in this case, woman's) labor. No game is played without human labor. No fish is hooked, without human labor. All this independent of whether the results have any economic value or not. No sunset is observed, no lover is courted, no math problem is solved, no poem is penned, and no song is sung, without human labor.

That's not the Labor Theory of Value. That's the Labor Value of Everything. :7

:hippie:

[The Magistrate]

99. Indeed, Ma'am: all The Rest Is Just A Haggling Over Price

The question is what proportion of the value labor adds does the laborer receive. Pretending labor does not create value is a necessary step to maintaining laborers should receive a minimal portion of the value they create.

[eallen]

128. I think the key is that we not treat anyone as "just" a laborer....

People are first and foremost people. And then, fellow citizens. Their children are our future, and should be protected, nourished, and educated. Their parents are our parents' cohort, and deserve a minimum security against old age. And we should keep in mind that we are all but a chance away from disability.

I think there's good reason for market allocation of resources, including signals to competent, adult participants, about where they should put their efforts, both entrepreneurial and purely fee for labor. My concern, as a liberal, is that we don't let that define our society as a whole, and in particular, that we build the right institutions for those who are not up to playing the economic game. All of us, at one time weren't. And at some future time, again won't be.

:hippie:

[The Magistrate]

130. That, Ma'am, Is Just A Symptom Of How Despised Work And Those Who Work Are In Our Society

To state that labor supplied by laborers increases the value of objects by changing their state or position to one more desirable, and that laborers are never paid the full increment of value their labor adds, the difference between what they are paid and what their labor adds being profit, nowhere states, or even implies, any person is in any way lesser, viewed as 'just' a laborer, because they live by exchanging their labor for considerations and goods. One has to come to the discussion with the view that labor is a lesser thing, and laborers a lower thing, to read that into any comment on the value labor adds to objects.

"Some of the happiest hours of my life were spent swinging a sledgehammer."

[FormerDittoHead]

84. I completely disagree. Fails to address art, invention and innovation.

I'll put this at the top - I agree that treating labor as a commodity isn't right, but I disagree with Marx.

The value of something is what someone else is willing/able to pay for it. That's it.

The value of labor is the value of what it produces. It doesn't work the other way. The value of something is NOT reflected in what labor it took.

If it took me a year to make some piece of crappy art, it doesn't make the art worth more than a Jackson Pollock done in a day.

Labor should be paid according to profit. That's the heart of this issue.

In this country, owners and managers are paid for the "value" they add (so they get *percentages*) but labor is paid for what the labor market bears, rather than a similar percentage of profits.

Hammer to nail, that's our problem.

But back to Marx, his model simply doesn't work for encouraging invention and innovation.

Is art a commodity? I argue it is not.

Art is not interchangeable or otherwise worthless. Art is present in things, not just what you'd hang on the wall. It is why Apple products sell so well.

I invent / design something new, it is not an interchangeable commodity. If I find a more efficient way of doing something, it isn't worthless. Innovation REDUCES the amount of labor needed to put into something. Where does the innovator get rewarded in Marx's model?

His whole use of "commodities" worked well in static world where nothing new was created, and surprise - Marxist states were very well known for their lack of art, creativity and innovation.

I'm not citing some right wing book: History has shown that when invention is encouraged and rewarded, there is more invention. Furthermore, I can argue that innovation and invention are pretty much responsible for most of the improvement in the quality of life in the world in the last 140 years.

China's a fantastic example of this. Under a Marxist state, there was virtually no innovation. Up until the 1980's they were mostly an agrarian economy. Under capitalism, there is a LOT of invention and innovation. (for better and worse)

What do we need more / less of? I say we need more invention and innovation. Marx won't get us there.

[The Magistrate]

91. Art, Invention, And Inovation, Sir, Are All Forms Of Labor

All are effort expended to alter the state or position of an object, to one conceived to be of greater value than its previous condition.

Labor is a commodity; the problem is that the persons who supply labor are necessarily paid less than the value of that commodity to the person who purchases it, the difference between what people are paid for labor and the value labor adds to some object by altering its state or position being denominated as profit, and accruing in toto to the purchaser of labor.

[coalition_unwilling]

112. "Marxist states were very well known for their lack of art, creativity

and innovation."

Again with the "Marxist states" trope. WTF is a "Marxist state" and what are some examples?

Familiar with the movies of Sergei Eizenstein (USSR), the Buena Vista Social Club (Cuba) or Sputnik (USSR)?

China was not and is not a "Marxist state" (whatever that means).

[Hannah Bell]

117. "Marxist states were very well known for their lack of art, creativity and innovation."

only in propagandists' screeds.

[coalition_unwilling]

159. Thank you. I do hear the crickets a-chripin' - n/t

[FormerDittoHead]

166. Only because your ridiculous cherry picking spoke for itself. I didn't feel the need to add. n/t

[coalition_unwilling]

167. Whatever you have to tell yourself. You didn't even bother to define

"Marxist state" probably because there is no such thing.

[ElboRuum]

165. Well, I think it has become clear to me now what kind of thread this has become.

Communism has failed all over the world as an economic system and has inevitably resulted in strict top-level governance in each nation in which it has been tried. Those that persist have had to give over to other means of economic stimulus, and those that have not have expired. Some people would see that as an inevitable consequence of such a system, not as an unhappy accident. However, every time we feel that labor is undervalued, someone trots out Marx as the pied piper of the proletariat.

Marx did not understand the intangibles of economics, which is why it always fails so spectacularly. In other words, what motivates people to spin labor into value, what its value is, and the idea that not all labor must contribute to value. The theories, while philosophically interesting, have always been a bit on the idealistic side and presume an acceptance of the system, and history has shown that specifically for this economic principle, one that requires such fealty to its core principles to accomplish stated goals, are waylaid at the first appearance of detractors.

Now, I know that I'll take a sufficiently large amount of shit for this, and knowing what has already transpired in this thread, probably all of that shit will be cast at me in single word dismissals, and by those who have already made the decision that we need to give Marx yet another go. Unfortunately, economics is not religion and being an atheist, I don't really feel this thread is worthy of further participation, because people who believe otherwise are certainly being insinuated to be heretics and blasphemers. If those aren't the earmarks of a religion, I certainly don't know what would then qualify.

[lonestarnot]

88. Sounds like crap to me.

[Zorra]

92. How much time ya got?

I do believe his theory of exploitation.

As far as value goes, there are, IMO, other components and conditions that constitute the value of an item relative to situations/ conditions.

Short answer, don't have time for more.

[Cleita]

100. In reality, the value of an object is what people are willing

to pay for it. I paid way too much for gas last week that outstripped whatever it cost to produce it, yet I did because I had to, so I guess I was willing to pay for it. I sold a crock pot at a yard sale also last week for 15% of what I paid for it, in order to help pay for the gas and I took it because that's all the buyer was willing to pay for it.

Labor enters the equation somewhere but I haven't really thought that part out yet.

[Silent3]

101. I believe that most current value comes from energy and past innovation

What we accomplish by means of human labor and new innovations is greatly magnified by cheap energy and by all of the innovations of the past which we currently build upon.

Since the energy we use ultimately derives from public sources (most of it, one way or another, indirect solar energy), and since after some reasonable limited time (shorter than the current insanity of intellectual property law) invention and innovation should be considered a shared human legacy in the public domain, I think these public foundations form a sound basis for implementing strong progressive taxation which funds public works, public institutions, and programs that insure a decent basic standard of living for all people. When you tax people at higher rates the more they make, I see that as simply a way of rightly reclaiming a share of their success which has been greatly magnified by a public legacy.

If you're looking for greater fairness in the distribution of wealth, I think this line of thinking is much more likely to get you there than trying to assign value based current human labor invested in supplying a product or service.

[JackRiddler]

134. All true.

Your approach is best as an argument for change that might convince people.

Still, given that energy and past innovation boil down to nature and past labor, of course.

[Name removed]

144. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[leftstreet]

106. K&R for a great thread

:thumbsup:

[Unvanguard]

108. Not as Marx understood it, no.

But he is right about the alienation of labor described in your second quote from him.

[BOG PERSON]

113. if LToV is wrong, value is subjective

hence, capitalism is all in your head. you can't abolish an idea, man. you gotta abolish the self.

[ElboRuum]

164. I should think that obvious.

All value is subjective.

[backscatter712]

122. Plenty of alternative theories exist, and a lot of them aren't Ayn-Randian nonsense.

I'd have to dig up my notes from my political theory class - we read Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man and Baudrillard's Simulation and Simulacra. Tough reads, but good reads

Baudrillard had the idea that the labor theory of value has been flipped on its head in modern society, partially because of what Marcuse described as the creation of false needs to sell us stuff, thanks to the advertising wurlitzer we're all bombarded with 24/7 to keep fueling our consumer culture.

While classic Marxist theory states that Use-Value (UV) determined Exchange Value (EV), instead, Baudrillard claimed that Use-Value is determined partially by Exchange-Value, and partially by Sign-Value - there it comes down to symbols. In this case, symbols drilled into our heads like golden arches, Walmart's smiley-face, Microsoft's Windows Logo, and all the sex-laden advertsing and dream-worlds of consumerism designed to get us to think we need these products - creation of false needs.

[Silent3]

136. If there are "false" needs, what then are "true" needs?

Food, clothing, and shelter? If so, how basic and minimal must those things become before they are stripped of all "false" need?

Is health care beyond whatever it takes for people to live just barely long enough to procreate and perpetuate the species a false need, based on cultural "advertising" convincing us that we're somehow entitled to longer, healthier lives?

Presuming you really don't have anything so dire in mind as my deliberately extreme notion of "true" needs, where exactly do you draw the line between a "false" and a "true" necessity?

[backscatter712]

145. Do you need that plasma HDTV? How about that smartphone?

Or that 1,500 calorie meal at McDonalds? The advertising wurlitzer that hits us with thousands of advertisements every day is very good at making people think that they do.

Certainly, there's a line that is crossed where you hit true needs - the need for shelter, need for health care, food, water, other essentials. But the vast, vast majority of what we buy isn't used to satisfy true needs. Instead, we "need" that new car, or that swanky outfit, or we "need" a faster computer even though the slower computer we've already got still works just fine. Think of how many times we've been suckered into buying stuff we don't really need - we've all done it.

[Silent3]

146. You're avoiding the demarcation issue.

You're throwing out examples of what you think is over the top, but not getting at where the line is drawn. "Need" is a much trickier concept to pin down than many people think, especially to distinguish "need" from "merely want".

It's usually assumed that "need" includes being able to survive, but even that can be questioned. Do all of us really need to live? If the need to live is accepted, then how long and how healthy? Were people 100 or 1000 or 10000 years ago getting what they "needed" or not? Does the existence of modern medicine supply a "need", or create a "want"?

Even setting aside such basics, and getting into territory closer to where most people would start to argue about what's needed or not, it's too easy to substitute one's personal tastes and values for a fair and unbiased standard of demarcation. Personally, I love well-made examples of technology like smartphones and HDTVs, but I sneer at a lot of clothing sold these days as frivolous, or just plain stupid. While I can admit that neither is absolutely needed, I consider a lot of technology a better value for the dollar, and much less likely to be a matter of advertiser-manipulated desire, than I consider most fashion, with clever marketing convincing hordes of young people to turn themselves into a walking billboards for Hollister or the like.

While I'm sure there are people who buy HDTVs mostly as status symbols, I personally wanted HDTV well before HDTV was even available. No advertising was needed to convince me I wanted HDTV. Since the time I was a kid in the 70s and tried to project the image from a 19" color TV onto a wall to make a bigger picture, I knew I wanted better technology than existed at the time. By the early 80s I knew what terms like "lines of resolution" meant, I knew (and was appalled by) the way color was encoded in an American NTSC video signal. No marketing campaign was required to make me want something a lot better.

What I think you're missing is this:

(1) Lives where nothing but our barest survival needs are met would hardly be worth living. Even though there can be a lot of argument about how far and in what ways beyond barest survival you need to go to make life desirable and worthwhile, most people don't merely "want" more than barest survival, they feel a need for at least a little something more, or else they'd feel they might as well just die and get the tedium and struggle of life over with.

(2) While we certainly are manipulated by advertising, even in the absence of advertising people will, all by themselves, come up with things they wish they had that don't yet exist, will start desiring things they hadn't desired before when they learn that those things do exist, and desire things that other people have that they can't afford. It's not as if the basic human condition is contently living like an extremely ascetic order of monks until the evil advertisers come along and upset some naturally-occurring spartan state of bliss.

[Taitertots]

129. Labor theory of value is based on assumptions that don't exist in real life

The key assumption that needs to be dropped is that there are no market externalities or market failures.

[Name removed]

143. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jmowreader]

137. Kinda...

The value of an object is also related to the materials used to make it--remember, it is possible to make things today with no labor whatsoever, or very little labor.

[Name removed]

142. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[WatsonT]

147. Not all labor is equal.

[robcon]

148. The labor theory of value is not only illogical, it's proven not to be true.

Value=relative scarcity... i.e., supply vs. demand.

[The Magistrate]

154. That, Sir, Is Just Plain Silly...

[TBF]

149. Just giving this a kick -

Happy May Day white_wolf!

[The Magistrate]

155. A May Day 'Kick', Ladies and Gentlemen

[darkstar3]

160. Before the explosion of technology over the last century, I would have said yes.

But how much labor goes into the creation of the computers we all use to post on this website? It isn't much, since it's done mostly by robot.

There are many valuable objects in this world today that exist without much help in the way of traditional labor.

[Odin2005]

161. Mainstream (AKA Elite-controled) Economics of the last 150 years have all been attempts to prove...

...The LTV wrong. Marx brought the LTV to it's logical conclusion, and it horrified the elites, so they dumped the classical economics of Adam Smith, who also believed in the LTV, for "Neo-Classical" Economics based on a conveniently relativist conception of value that is now used to justify the absurdities and injusticies of Capitalism.

[ThomWV]

162. Have you read so much as the first page of Keynes?

The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, page 1. No kidding, the very first page.

[ElboRuum]

163. In part, yes.

Certainly there is a relationship, and true, the nature of the object holds value too. However, no amount of labor imbues value into an object with a nature that isn't itself of value. For example, I could spend quite a bit of labor constructing a widget, which creates value, however the widget is fundamentally useless which negates the value of the labor. Moreover, there are things which exist which are of such value that the labor to create them adds insignificant value to their natural value, for example, works of art, in which the labor required to create them pales in comparison to their cultural importance.

So, while I agree in principle, at least as far to say that labor carries some of the weight in the creation of value, I believe that Marx misses the mark in using it to explain this in his views on exploitation. The worker only becomes poorer with the more wealth he produces if we assume that the largest contributor to value is labor and that the compensation that is received is not equitable to the value imbued. At some point the nature of the thing produced and whether or not that thing is valuable to others are the final arbiters of worth. It is the idea of labor itself having intrinsic value, that is to say value absent of its context which is what the LTV suggests, when clearly it is contributory only and lacks this quality without the productive context is what I take issue with.