There’s this new video by a good YouTuber - Value by Unlearning Economics. There was also an article by Ben Burgis for the Jacobin which argued the same.
Is it possible, as both these people argue, to separate Marx’s critique of capitalism from his theory of value? To keep the former and discard the latter?
Edit - I’m not siding with the video or with Burgis, btw. I think Marx’s value theory is correct. I’m just looking for people who can shine some light on this new(?) phenomena of leftists speaking out against LTV while trying “save” Marx’s critique of capital. To me, that just seems like a pointless and hopeless endeavour.
I did enjoy the video and it does discuss and play around with value vs price and couple of other arguments. I do appreciate modern economists at least doing some grappling with Marxism, even if I don't agree.
Couple of critical notes: Marx doesn't say that labour is the ONLY source of value. Nature (land, extracted resources, etc) is an obvious other source.
Unlearning does not address thought experiments like "what if my landlord died and we didn't find out for a year? Is his corpse 'producing value' or what? In exploring this, we eventually see that the labour that a capitalist might* do (managerial tasks, directing labour, stocking inventory) is minuscule compared to their recompense; the majority of the capitalists income does not actually require the capitalist.
You can also branch off into discussing technology, how it's built with labour, how capitalists usually aren't actually the engineers etc.
He does mention that even without the ltv Marxism promotes strong arguments against labour exploitation, but unlearning also just has soccdemmy vibes and spruikes for mixed market economies
Marx mentions that rarity is also a source of value. I remember he gives the specific example of pearls in Capital. I've only had to bring this up like one time though, when a liberal was trying to say Marx was debunked by replicas of famous art not having the same value as the original piece, even if the replica had a more complicated labor process.
Liberals really like to invent very convoluted brain puzzles that go nowhere.
I feel like this is just the ship of Theseus with extra steps.
And I haven't read Capital but I'd be shocked if Marx doesn't mention speculation somewhere, and the value of art is entirely based on speculation.
The price of art is based on speculation, the value of art is equal to the material and labor inputs
Where the labor value is calculated using labor time normalized on the average consumption of social product the laborer/artist needs to maintain their standard of living.
They don't read. Neither do I, but you know
I think your comment got posted halfway?
Firefox glitched out. I was able to click post but my phone slowed down to the point where a keypress took more than a minute to respond.
Sounds like she's preoccupied at the moment :mao-aggro-shining: