The biggest argument against LTV on YT has been the gold nugget argument. A person could work 10 hours searching for gold and come up with a little dust while a person wandering down a creek stumbles on a rock. Underneath the rock is a huge chunk of gold. How does LTV deal with this? Great video, btw.
@NoMoreSunsets. Value is socially necessary labor time. What is the average amount of time required to produce gold? How many hours do gold mining companies expend each year producing their yearly gold output? These answers determine the value of gold.
I could find a 20-dollar bill on the sidewalk or I could work for 2 hours to make it. This doesn't mean that the money has no value.
@NoMoreSunsets: Marx had dealt with this in Capital, Vol 1, Section 1: "Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on the earth’s surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an average, a great deal of labour time." So is gold nuggets.
Nevertheless, Marx distinguished use value from exchange value. A thing MUST have some use value first before it can be exchanged in the market. To paraphrase Proudhon, a product nobody wants is not a product.
@DonKhoi Yeah, I actually knew this but didn't see the obvious rehashing of an old argument. That seems to be the only trick that anti-LTV people come up with.
@Armitage2. This is a good question. The problem comes from looking at the individual commodity rather than the whole product of labor. In the course of one labor process many different commodities can produced. In this case a meat packer spends an hour working and at the end has many cuts of beef. The total value of these cuts represent his labor (+the value of any used up inputs). How this value is divided amongst the different cuts is not important.
How can labor TIME affect the value? If I, take 50 hours to make a computer game and another worker takes 50 hours to make, say a chair, my computer game is worth more than the chair (higher cost) because I get paid more. Where does labor COST come in if you use the labor TIME to determine value?
@Mystic1Knight Go read Marx capital in combination with the "companion Marx" of David Harvey. Buy them both. After reading them go read Ernest Mandels Late capitalism or limits to capital
@Mystic1Knight We are talking about "socially" necessary labour time. The abstract labour put into the commodities together with the diverse concrete labour processes matter. Also, the exchange process of the market is essential to an understanding of the workings of a capitalist society.
@Mystic1Knight. This is not true at all. The value of the product isn't the same as the wage. In fact, this distinction is at the heart of Marx's theory of exploitation.
It is true that 1 hour of skilled labor produces more value than 1 hour of unskilled labor b/c skilled labor represents stored up labor-time in the form of training, practice etc. There will be a video on this concept in this series called "Complex and Simple Labor". An early draft of the script can be read on my blog.
@Mystic1Knight I would also add that value is not the same as price in Marx's formulation. In fact, he has elsewhere criticized ppl for thinking value and price is a direct relationship. Prices could very well be determined by S&D. But think: and SD graph is a graphical representation of a numerical set. This numerical set is 'given'. Labor values is that which these sets osciallate around in a long run tendency. There are many studies to prove this: Shaikh 1996, Ochoa, 1988 and 1984
@Mystic1Knight: If you, an average worker, spend 1 hr to make 1 lb of tomatoes, another (note!) equally skilled, average, worker makes 2 lbs of lemons in the same amount of time, then your 1 lb of tomatoes is worth his 2 lbs of lemon.
"The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time." Capital vol. 1.
Nevertheless, a computer programmer and a carpenter had different degrees of skills and their jobs have different intensity. So such a comparison is problematic.
I think your video is unnecessarily confusing. Marx's main point about exchange in chapter one, which is that the value of a commodity is determined by what you can exchange for it, which is only other commodities that other people made and nothing more, no matter how "useful" your creation is, because anyone's demand for things is no more than what they can supply in return.
Also, Marx had a really good explanation of the relation of consumption and production in the Grundrisse, appendix 1.
@coolst0ry The value of a commodity is determined by the use value and exchange value of the commodity. There is a unity here that you seem to neglect. A product without a use value for someone is no commodity.
@MrEverpresent I would rather say that the concept Value contains within itself, so to speak, both quantitative ( exchange value ) and qualitative ( use value ) aspects, and that the magnitude of value for a particular use-value is DETERMINED [emphasis] by the amount of socially necessary labout time involved in it's production.
How do you define the difference between labor and profits? A store sells products for higher than they bought it for, so it can be said to be making a profit. But of course the fact that the service of selling is a commodity itself means that labor time is obscure and can never really be accounted for. And if the labor time is obscured by commodity exchange, how do we determine the value of something without using a supply-demand model?
@Mystic1Knight. The full value of the commodity is the amount of labor that went into it. Profits are the full value of the commodity minus the wages paid workers. This profit is divided amongst the various factions of the capitalist class: productive capitalists, merchants, bankers, landlords, etc.
If labor time is the measure of value, can the labor theory of value explain why, say coal, is cheaper (less value) than another commodity even though it takes more total labor time to make?
@brendanmcooney Marx argued that supply and demand canceled each other out (I think you mentioned that in another video). But wouldn't the large demand for coal decrease the supply, therefore increasing the value (neoclassical economics i believe it is). So, doesn't supply and demand actually have a much bigger role?
@Mystic1Knight. There will be a video in the series called "supply and demand". Supply and demand cancel each other out over the long run in the case of freely reproducible goods. But some goods are not freely reproducible- they don't respond to the normal laws of supply and demand, an increase in price above value doesn't trigger an increase in supply. In this case supply and demand don't cancel and there is a value transfer in exchange. It's not a neoclassical concept, but a classical one.
How about commodities that take less labor to produce than another, but yet are still more expensive? If people are willing to pay a lot of money for my apples, I sell them more expensively. So, has the value of them increased even though no additional labor has been added to the production process? Or are price and value exclusive from one another? -thanks
@Mystic1Knight. If you sell something above its value you are making a super-profit. That is, you are not just realizing the value of your own labor, you are also appropriating value in exchange. This is possible because money acts at the universal symbol/embodiment of value.
Wait a minute: if you're old and slow, and therefore you take 3 hours to make the widget, that doesn't mean that the widget has higher individual value. It just means that, to produce the same thing, you used less energy, and therefore took longer, to produce that widget. Or maybe there's something wrong with my analysis. *scratch-head*
thanks for the knowledge !!
1?
what are the name of the author of the cartoons ?
laley091 1 year ago
people don't get what they want... they want what they get...
kutthroat84 1 year ago
...this series is a good complement to the series Debt as Money ad Debt as Money II...
...interesting how societies production has come to a halt because of greed of the Money Masters... (another good series)...
Will224000 1 year ago
The biggest argument against LTV on YT has been the gold nugget argument. A person could work 10 hours searching for gold and come up with a little dust while a person wandering down a creek stumbles on a rock. Underneath the rock is a huge chunk of gold. How does LTV deal with this? Great video, btw.
NoMoreSunsets 1 year ago
@NoMoreSunsets. Value is socially necessary labor time. What is the average amount of time required to produce gold? How many hours do gold mining companies expend each year producing their yearly gold output? These answers determine the value of gold.
I could find a 20-dollar bill on the sidewalk or I could work for 2 hours to make it. This doesn't mean that the money has no value.
brendanmcooney 1 year ago 11
@NoMoreSunsets: Marx had dealt with this in Capital, Vol 1, Section 1: "Diamonds are of very rare occurrence on the earth’s surface, and hence their discovery costs, on an average, a great deal of labour time." So is gold nuggets.
Nevertheless, Marx distinguished use value from exchange value. A thing MUST have some use value first before it can be exchanged in the market. To paraphrase Proudhon, a product nobody wants is not a product.
DonKhoi 1 year ago
@DonKhoi Yeah, I actually knew this but didn't see the obvious rehashing of an old argument. That seems to be the only trick that anti-LTV people come up with.
NoMoreSunsets 1 year ago
question: why is the price of a good cut of beef higher than a poor cut? don't they require the same amount of labour?
Armitage2 1 year ago
@Armitage2. This is a good question. The problem comes from looking at the individual commodity rather than the whole product of labor. In the course of one labor process many different commodities can produced. In this case a meat packer spends an hour working and at the end has many cuts of beef. The total value of these cuts represent his labor (+the value of any used up inputs). How this value is divided amongst the different cuts is not important.
brendanmcooney 1 year ago
@Armitage2: Not always the case. Well-cut meat by means of machine may be ways cheaper than its poor hand-cut counterpart.
DonKhoi 1 year ago 2
Das Ist Gut
MalevolentSinister 1 year ago
How can labor TIME affect the value? If I, take 50 hours to make a computer game and another worker takes 50 hours to make, say a chair, my computer game is worth more than the chair (higher cost) because I get paid more. Where does labor COST come in if you use the labor TIME to determine value?
Mystic1Knight 1 year ago
Sorry for all the questions, I'm just trying to understand the LTV a bit more...
Mystic1Knight 1 year ago
@Mystic1Knight Go read Marx capital in combination with the "companion Marx" of David Harvey. Buy them both. After reading them go read Ernest Mandels Late capitalism or limits to capital
MrEverpresent 1 year ago
@Mystic1Knight We are talking about "socially" necessary labour time. The abstract labour put into the commodities together with the diverse concrete labour processes matter. Also, the exchange process of the market is essential to an understanding of the workings of a capitalist society.
MrEverpresent 1 year ago
@Mystic1Knight. This is not true at all. The value of the product isn't the same as the wage. In fact, this distinction is at the heart of Marx's theory of exploitation.
It is true that 1 hour of skilled labor produces more value than 1 hour of unskilled labor b/c skilled labor represents stored up labor-time in the form of training, practice etc. There will be a video on this concept in this series called "Complex and Simple Labor". An early draft of the script can be read on my blog.
brendanmcooney 1 year ago 2
@Mystic1Knight I would also add that value is not the same as price in Marx's formulation. In fact, he has elsewhere criticized ppl for thinking value and price is a direct relationship. Prices could very well be determined by S&D. But think: and SD graph is a graphical representation of a numerical set. This numerical set is 'given'. Labor values is that which these sets osciallate around in a long run tendency. There are many studies to prove this: Shaikh 1996, Ochoa, 1988 and 1984
JP2times2007 1 year ago
@Mystic1Knight: If you, an average worker, spend 1 hr to make 1 lb of tomatoes, another (note!) equally skilled, average, worker makes 2 lbs of lemons in the same amount of time, then your 1 lb of tomatoes is worth his 2 lbs of lemon.
"The labour time socially necessary is that required to produce an article under the normal conditions of production, and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time." Capital vol. 1.
DonKhoi 1 year ago
@Mystic1Knight :
Nevertheless, a computer programmer and a carpenter had different degrees of skills and their jobs have different intensity. So such a comparison is problematic.
DonKhoi 1 year ago
I think your video is unnecessarily confusing. Marx's main point about exchange in chapter one, which is that the value of a commodity is determined by what you can exchange for it, which is only other commodities that other people made and nothing more, no matter how "useful" your creation is, because anyone's demand for things is no more than what they can supply in return.
Also, Marx had a really good explanation of the relation of consumption and production in the Grundrisse, appendix 1.
coolst0ry 1 year ago
@coolst0ry The value of a commodity is determined by the use value and exchange value of the commodity. There is a unity here that you seem to neglect. A product without a use value for someone is no commodity.
MrEverpresent 1 year ago
@MrEverpresent I would rather say that the concept Value contains within itself, so to speak, both quantitative ( exchange value ) and qualitative ( use value ) aspects, and that the magnitude of value for a particular use-value is DETERMINED [emphasis] by the amount of socially necessary labout time involved in it's production.
stonemanrichard 4 months ago
How do you define the difference between labor and profits? A store sells products for higher than they bought it for, so it can be said to be making a profit. But of course the fact that the service of selling is a commodity itself means that labor time is obscure and can never really be accounted for. And if the labor time is obscured by commodity exchange, how do we determine the value of something without using a supply-demand model?
Mystic1Knight 1 year ago
@Mystic1Knight. The full value of the commodity is the amount of labor that went into it. Profits are the full value of the commodity minus the wages paid workers. This profit is divided amongst the various factions of the capitalist class: productive capitalists, merchants, bankers, landlords, etc.
brendanmcooney 1 year ago
If labor time is the measure of value, can the labor theory of value explain why, say coal, is cheaper (less value) than another commodity even though it takes more total labor time to make?
Mystic1Knight 1 year ago
@Mystic1Knight. like what?
brendanmcooney 1 year ago
@brendanmcooney Marx argued that supply and demand canceled each other out (I think you mentioned that in another video). But wouldn't the large demand for coal decrease the supply, therefore increasing the value (neoclassical economics i believe it is). So, doesn't supply and demand actually have a much bigger role?
Mystic1Knight 1 year ago
@Mystic1Knight. There will be a video in the series called "supply and demand". Supply and demand cancel each other out over the long run in the case of freely reproducible goods. But some goods are not freely reproducible- they don't respond to the normal laws of supply and demand, an increase in price above value doesn't trigger an increase in supply. In this case supply and demand don't cancel and there is a value transfer in exchange. It's not a neoclassical concept, but a classical one.
brendanmcooney 1 year ago
How about commodities that take less labor to produce than another, but yet are still more expensive? If people are willing to pay a lot of money for my apples, I sell them more expensively. So, has the value of them increased even though no additional labor has been added to the production process? Or are price and value exclusive from one another? -thanks
Mystic1Knight 1 year ago
@Mystic1Knight. If you sell something above its value you are making a super-profit. That is, you are not just realizing the value of your own labor, you are also appropriating value in exchange. This is possible because money acts at the universal symbol/embodiment of value.
brendanmcooney 1 year ago
@brendanmcooney Is there any reason, in your view, to favour LTV over the more parsimonious subjective theory of value?
bitbutter 1 year ago
Rofl at 5:09-5:10
Great video, as always.
DrunkOnInk 1 year ago
Wait a minute: if you're old and slow, and therefore you take 3 hours to make the widget, that doesn't mean that the widget has higher individual value. It just means that, to produce the same thing, you used less energy, and therefore took longer, to produce that widget. Or maybe there's something wrong with my analysis. *scratch-head*
okayillgonow 1 year ago
@okayillgonow. More time= higher value. Value is measured in time, not energy.
brendanmcooney 1 year ago