Is the Labor Theory of Value junk?
Is the Labor Theory of Value junk?
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.
In my experience 90% of the people who claim to have "debunked" the LTV are conflating value with price.
If you ever have the question "is X Marxist theory correct" please just read the theory, the LTV is literally the first chapter of Das Kapital and is the easiest to understand
I am currently reading it! Marx is such a good, but dense writer. I tried reading some “introductions” and “explanations” by others but tbh, it’s just better to read him directly.
The video goes in-depth about testing the theory and concludes there isn’t any empirical proof for it. Not so much challenging it on philosophical grounds.
It's one way of framing reality that has a lot of utility and explanatory power (how economies function on a large scale, how economics interacts with power between classes, for example). Subjective theory of value has some utility and explanatory power as well (why a specific item sells for a specific price at a specific point in time, for example). If someone is outright rejecting LTV, rather than accepting its limits or adapting it, they're probably doing so out of ideology more than anything (and/or they misunderstand it).
Funnily enough, the site tagline just told me to go read Synopsis of Capital.
LTV is already empirically proven and Burgis is a hack. There's no reason to make such a concession. It's like "Marxists" who still concede to the Mises' and Hayek's economic calculation problem even though it has been technologically solvable for about 50 years now.