There is a Wikipedia page for the Labor Theory of Value.
There is a Wikipedia page for the Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value.
But there is no Wikipedia page for "Criticisms of the Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value". Even Google doesn't turn anything up.
I have not read enough theory to even fully understand LTV, let alone understand its criticisms. But I'm assuming there are some Marxists who have written the "Criticisms of the Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value". What would these be? Right now you get the impression that the "Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value" are going unchallenged.
I don't think anyone actually takes these criticisms seriously. LTV has basically just been taken for granted since well before Marx was writing.
In fact, the ultimate restriction is time.[2] Households divide their time (24 hours a day) into leisure time and time for work. Time for work is to make money to buy goods for consumption. The household chooses that amount of leisure time and (via working time) that amount of consumption goods that maximises its utility level. With Marx, working time is not based on a free decision of households, but the outcome of a class struggle between workers and capitalists, the former trying to decrease, the latter to increase working time.
I'm sorry, what? This is just gobbledyremoved.
Edit apparently the end of that word is racist? I looked it up and it comes from turkey noises. I just means it's nonsense.
It also was used as a racist slur against... Asian people I think? Can't remember off the top of my head and I'm not looking it up just to see. Besides, gobbledyremoved is hilarious.
The last four letters are 100% a racist slur, just don't know if it is the the context of being the last four letters in that word.
Like turkey Chinese? Yeah idk. If I was racist it's definitely by accident.
Yeah, I was mostly wondering about the later critiques rather than the typical neoclassical ones. Like the section about the "Importance of Labor" or the Ecological Economics ones.
I tried to do a detailed thing, but I'm on my glitchy ass phone and it all got deleted, but the ecological economics section is an argument against ecological economics and says that Marx relies on use value being more real than exchange value and that use value is culturally determined. Pretty sure this is just totally made up and has no actual relationship with anything Marx said. Tilting at windmills. The next section literally proves Marx wrong by saying that the root of inequality is that capitalist have uneqaul access to the means of production which is.... Creative.
In my experience, a lot of criticisms rely on the assumption that value and price are the same thing, whereas every Marxist knows that price is exchange value.
whereas every Marxist knows that price is exchange value.
PRICE IS THE MONEY-FORM OF EXCHANGE VALUE RAAAAAAAAAAAAA
:agony-turbo:
Although since Marx we have moved money form being gold based and simply a commodity to being fiat which complicates it a lot
I mean reserve banking precedes Marx so this isn't really the case, but it's certainly more extreme than it used to be
I think Anwar Shaikh has shown empirically that the price of wholesale commodities still directly reflects the price of gold however. Gold is in effect still the dominant money commodity.
If I said price is derived from exchanged value would that be more accurate?
I think it's accurate enough to say price is exchange value tbh, I was just being a pedant.
What do you think about the Ecological Economics or the Post-Keynesian argument?
The Post-Keynesian arguments are the same dreck as earlier Keynesians, namely that the market allocates resources based on "marginal utility" or "preference". These people live in a fantasy land where the market magically determines the value of all products, sets the price accordingly, and there's an omnipotent force (the State/central bank) who is supposed to step in if Mr. Market isn't doing his self-care and keeping up with therapy.
As TankieTanuki said, these criticisms ultimately get back to the idea that price is value, which is something that Marxists fundamentally disagree with (fwiw, stock market gurus like Warren Buffett are on the same side as Marx, "value investing" requires price/value mismatches on a fundamental level!).
The ecological economics theory from Wiki sounds like some ecofash b.s. on first read. "Labor doesn't create value because labor takes energy to produce" - no shit, that's the "v" part of the "c+v+s". "Cultural differences can change the use-value of goods" - yes to some extent, but this sounds an awful lot like "those primitive people don't value those resources".
IDK I've already shared about as much as I know 🤷. Ask my cousin, TheoryTanuki.
Because they didn't read Marx for basic comprehension. That is always the answer. Instead, the critics seem to just copy and cite each others' misapprehensions.
The most common criticism is to declare a dichotomy between LTV and marginalism, which to me implies that they don't really understand either of them because they're confusing pricing with the Marxist concept of the aggregate value of commodities. Anyone who read Capital while conscious will know how ridiculous this is, given that Marx explicitly differentiated this from exchange value.
Because they didn’t read Marx
Weird how everyone from left to right seem to share this one weird habit
Understandable, if they did that they would have to have a criticisms of the criticisms of the criticisms of the labour theory of value page.
Well, no reason not to make a "Criticisms of the Criticisms of the Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value" page if such criticisms exist.
Yeah but then they'll have to make a criticisms of the criticisms of the criticisms of the criticisms of the labor theory of value page.
Well, they will only have to make pages for the criticisms that exist. So, if there are "Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value", then there must be a page for it.
Similarly, if there are "Criticisms of the Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value", then there must be a page for it. If there isn't, that either means that such criticisms don't exist or that we must make such a page. After that, the onus is on others to first find the "Criticisms of the Criticisms of the Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value" and then make a page about it.
I only skimmed one part, the 'Socially Necessary Labor'-segment, and... at least the first criticism read like a (willful, perhaps) misunderstanding of the concept as Marx described it. The second is about practical implementation, and how that was basically impossible in the soviet union and the last is about how it's hard to measure (duh, it's a theoretical concept for the most part; mostly useful in the conception of further theory).
If the other criticisms follow a similar line, they'll take one micro-aspect of Marxist theory and then lament how that aspect, in isolation, isn't getting you anywhere.
Not too familiar with that field, but Cockshott might be relevant to throw at that. He has a similar energy-centered bongrip take on economics. The segment generally reads like a more nuanced criticism, though their equation of use-values with material wealth and exchange-values with cultural wealth seems sus at best. Might make more sense in the wider context of their critique, maybe... (trying to be generous here)
There's something with cyberneticians and having funny names. :shrug-outta-hecks: Stafford Beer's daughter is called Vanilla Beer, btw.
