# Labor Theory of Value **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 5, 2016, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606 "2016-06-05T21:11:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/61 "2016-08-16T22:39:13Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > No, you have not met any of his objections. I would say you have done nothing except to obfuscate the issue and claim that nobody understands what Marx really meant except you. Show me where I said that. > [@](#): > > No. If anyone here is misunderstand Marx’s work, it is you. It is not remotely difficult to understand, even in translations. It’s still quite _wrong_ regardless. Wait. I misunderstand Marx. Marx is wrong. Does that mean I’m right? Or do I understand Marx, and am therefore wrong in defending Marx? Or what? I’m confused! > [@](#): > > You are demonstrably wrong. Marx very clearly did use such a term in describing the “socially necessary abstract labor-time”. So ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/62 "2016-08-16T22:48:59Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > It may not have been crystal clear. So: you hire somebody at $30/h to make a chair. You’ve exchanged, in other words, $30 dollars of your money for one hour’s worth of labor-power on your worker’s side. These $30 dollars are gone, however, already exchanged, and all you have is labor power now. That labor power goes into a chair, and you go to try and sell it, but its exchange value has yet to be determined on the market. Now, if everybody else is capable of making chairs in two hours, while you’re stuck having yours made in four, then the “socially necessary labor time” that is embodied in a chair is just that. No matter your paid $120 dollars for it, its value is only $60 [well, technically, it’s the average of everybody elses’s two hours and your four, and those who’s value is actually $60 exactly realize an extra profit from selling them]. > > But [note](https://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/ch16.htm): “In the first stage of his analysis, Marx assumed that all exemplars of a given sort of product were produced in equal, normal, average conditions. The individual labor expended on every exemplar quantitatively coincides with the socially-necessary labor, and the individual value with the social or market value. Here the difference between individual labor and socially-necessary labor, between individual value and social (market) value, is not yet taken into account. Thus Marx speaks simply of “value,” and not of “market value,” in these passages (market value is not mentioned in the first volume of Capital).” > > I’m not sure how to answer, because I’m not sure I follow the reasoning, sorry. This happens all the time, doesn’t it–somebody is behind the curve with their product and needs to make it cheaper to compete, so either they buy machines, or fire workers and make the others work longer hours at lower pay, or some other thing that achieves that. In the meantime, you will hopefully have capital somewhere to allow you to bridge the gap; if not, they fail. That’s capitalism. > > I think the confusion may lie in the “socially necessary”–it’s not “socially necessary labor”, it’s “socially necessary labor time.” If you mean by “worthless” that it will not be able to realize a profit for you, the capitalist, yes, perhaps; if you mean, “it has no value,” no–after all, you exchanged value (money) for it; if you mean, “it makes no value in the chair,” yes, it does–just not enough, in the market place, to allow you to realize a profit. > > It’s a common, but still fallacious counterargument. You’ll have to explain the bit about “socially desirable”, which I’m not quite getting. And then, maybe it helps to think about it like this: what do you conceive of when you say “raw material”? Iron ore, say? Iron ore in a mine, one presumes–and a mine, not to put too fine a point on it, requires labor to be. If not iron ore in a mine, then maybe the wood in a forest? But that wood is equally available to everybody–it has use value, but no exchange value before it is worked on. This is why labor is the irreducible element of value: because nothing gets exchanged without it becomes the object of labor, whereas labor ITSELF is always a tradeable commodity (I can go to you and say, I’ll chuck down that tree for you, and it requires no previous expenditure of labor power for me to do so). Make any sense? Perhaps its easier to put it like this: if you pay me to get the ore I dig up out of a pit, you pay me not because of the raw material (which, one pit over, you might dig yourself), but because I have labored to get it. [And again, this is an imperfect analogy for Marx’s purposes, because he’s dealing with larger social and economic structures than simple one-to-one deals.] > > Marx isn’t the only one to criticize. Smith’s two beavers to one deer analogy is equally flawed. What is the societal need for deer and beaver? I can think of many uses for deer, but with beaver only pelts come to mind unless you are starving to death and would eat a beaver (Yeah, yuck it up folks. 🙂 ) > > Many things could flow from this. It may be that no commercial beaver hunting is done, or that specialization occurs and someone develops a way to farm beavers for commercial use, or a new fashion trend arises that makes every rich man in the society wants a nice beaver. (Yes, I’m really not doing this on purpose 🙂 ) > > But nothing, nothing at all suggests that solely because it takes twice as long to kill a beaver than it does a deer that any price/value any measure that means anything should mean a beaver is worth twice as much as a deer. That way of thinking is not just primitive it’s wrong. Use that theory to calculate any thing. You can’t. Not accurately. Well let me give it a try. The product is Labor Theory of Value. Its utility is 0 since it can’t calculate much of anything. Thus the labor used to produce it is a waste. I guess I can get behind the Labor Theory of Value in some cases… If a monkey produced abstract art is the monkey’s labor valued the same as a highly acclaimed “master?” No. How do natural resources and land have value? You willing to give me some of your land? If an asteroid of pure gold landed on my land and required no labor besides rolling it to a customer what would it be worth? The 5000 joules of rolling energy expended? Or whatever the market rate for gold is. How do you explain the difference in value between an equivalent sized log from an oak versus a southern pine? No real labor difference in bulldozing them over. Real difference in market value. I get it’s a theory. Just like a geocentric universe is a theory and that many learned men in the past studied if far longer than I. But when heliocentric model worked superiority geocentric ideas were discarded. Show me real life analysis for pricing derived from Labor Theory of Value that has any accuracy. Or you can go to any store and see how supply and demand mechanism works to assign relative value denominated in local currency. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/63 "2016-08-16T22:56:12Z")
Sorry, the five minute window expired. **Smiling bandit** , I ran your phrasing through _Capital_, and unsurprisingly, it does not exist. But “socially useful” exists, lo and behold! It appears twice, in both instances restating the condition for exchange values to exist–that any commodity just have some use value within society in order to be exchangeable. That’s not what **octopus** was saying (since it just determines its exchangeability, not its value), but hey, I stand corrected. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/64 "2016-08-16T23:01:47Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > Sorry, the five minute window expired. **Smiling bandit** , I ran your phrasing through _Capital_, and unsurprisingly, it does not exist. But “socially useful” exists, lo and behold! It appears twice, in both instances restating the condition for exchange values to exist–that any commodity just have some use value within society in order to be exchangeable. That’s not what **octopus** was saying (since it just determines its exchangeability, not its value), but hey, I stand corrected. Define use value? ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/65 "2016-08-16T23:02:04Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > That way of thinking is not just primitive it’s wrong. Use that theory to calculate any thing. You can’t. Not accurately. > > Well let me give it a try. The product is Labor Theory of Value. Its utility is 0 since it can’t calculate much of anything. Thus the labor used to produce it is a waste. I guess I can get behind the Labor Theory of Value in some cases… > > If a monkey produced abstract art is the monkey’s labor valued the same as a highly acclaimed “master?” No. How do natural resources and land have value? You willing to give me some of your land? If an asteroid of pure gold landed on my land and required no labor besides rolling it to a customer what would it be worth? The 5000 joules of rolling energy expended? Or whatever the market rate for gold is. > > How do you explain the difference in value between an equivalent sized log from an oak versus a southern pine? No real labor difference in bulldozing them over. Real difference in market value. > > I get it’s a theory. Just like a geocentric universe is a theory and that many learned men in the past studied if far longer than I. But when heliocentric model worked superiority geocentric ideas were discarded. Show me real life analysis for pricing derived from Labor Theory of Value that has any accuracy. > > Or you can go to any store and see how supply and demand mechanism works to assign relative value denominated in local currency. Och, **Octopus** , tell me why you bother? None of this has any intellectual value, speaks to the questions raised, bothers to engage with me, Marx, or anything remotely beyond your own narrow horizon of what the truth must be. But hey, you’ve made your point. I get it. I’m a moron. Marx is a moron. Can we be done with it now? You win! Congrats! You’ve shown me! I’m renouncing! You’ve beaten me with the sharp force of your excellent counter examples! 150 years of Marxist thought laid to rest! ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/66 "2016-08-16T23:05:26Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > Och, **Octopus** , tell me why you bother? None of this has any intellectual value, speaks to the questions raised, bothers to engage with me, Marx, or anything remotely beyond your own narrow horizon of what the truth must be. But hey, you’ve made your point. I get it. I’m a moron. Marx is a moron. Can we be done with it now? You win! Congrats! You’ve shown me! I’m renouncing! You’ve beaten me with the sharp force of your excellent counter examples! 150 years of Marxist thought laid to rest! Instead of a rant how about a single application of the theory? Surely after 150 years there are some solved, practical text book problems. In my own field of engineering that’s how we do things. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/67 "2016-08-16T23:05:44Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Define use value? “The usefulness of a thing.” (_Capital_ 1, 126). And the FN has Locke: “The natural worth of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities, or serve the conveniences of human life.” ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/68 "2016-08-16T23:08:33Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Instead of a rant how about a single application of the theory? Surely after 150 years there are some solved, practical text book problems. In my own field of engineering that’s how we do things. Right. \*Capital \*isn’t a theory of pricing, it’s a theory of capitalism. It’s not a text book for problems, it’s an attempt to explain the mechanisms of a complex social system. It does not solve micro-economic questions such as “how much will my chair sell for”. If you think that makes it useless, more power to you. It’s not meant to do the work you think it should be doing. Like a car that you use to slice a tomato. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 11:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/69 "2016-08-16T23:19:37Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > Right. \*Capital \*isn’t a theory of pricing, it’s a theory of capitalism. It’s not a text book for problems, it’s an attempt to explain the mechanisms of a complex social system. It does not solve micro-economic questions such as “how much will my chair sell for”. If you think that makes it useless, more power to you. It’s not meant to do the work you think it should be doing. Like a car that you use to slice a tomato. And how does it do so better than the laws of supply and demand? But look, advocating Labor Theory of Value is purely political and it solves no economic question. Or if I’m mistaken on that point what economic question has it answered? ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/70 "2016-08-16T23:37:44Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > And how does it do so better than the laws of supply and demand? > > But look, advocating Labor Theory of Value is purely political and it solves no economic question. Or if I’m mistaken on that point what economic question has it answered? I don’t think the laws of supply and demand are meant to describe the logic of capitalism, so much as the determination of market price, so that appears to be the wrong comparison. And the question is what you mean by “better,” or perhaps, how would you determine “better”? Does it describe the logic of capitalist enterprise? I think so, yeah, with the caveats appropriate to a 150 year old work. Others disagree. But _Capital_ isn’t about making predictions, or anything, except on the really long term (such as that overaccumulation will lead to crises). And no, it “solves” no economic question, that’s true, if by that you mean things like “how can I best make money with my car plant”. It does solve economic problems if the question is “why is there structural inequality, and why doesn’t capitalism produce wealth for everybody” or at least some people think so. And it’s even billed as political economy, so yes, it’s (also) political. But it’s a mistake to think that anybody’s economics are not also political–they’ve just done a bang up job claiming they’re not. ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 16, 2016, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/71 "2016-08-16T23:46:14Z")
Oh, and I recommend [this](http://davidharvey.org/2008/06/marxs-capital-class-01/). David Harvey is one of the preeminent Marxist thinkers of the day, and he walks you through _Capital_. It’s very good. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/72 "2016-08-17T15:26:02Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > Well, my bad, possibly; I’m still not quite sure I agree, but I’d have to go through the text again and let you know the specific objections, for which I have no time right now, so my apologies for this. It’s normal for other things to intrude. No need for apology on that score, just a fact of life. This is just a message board. > [@](#): > > Well, I agree theoretically, but disagree in practice, that you’ve managed to do this. I believe you are confusing the issue when you don’t deal with Marx’s terms, and I disagree that your ideas and his ideas are the same. But, as always, YMMV. Right now I think it would take extremely little effort to rewrite the entire OP using more “traditional” terminology. I think a simple find&replace would do the majority (but not all) of the work. I might actually test that to see if it meets my own standards. > [@](#): > > Yeah, I really wish people would stop lobbing the word “obvious” around so much. It clearly wasn’t; in fact, I’d say the way you were talking about this in your examples, was, simply, wrong. I understand that perspective. But you have to understand, you are not going to be my standard for clarity of writing. I’m not looking for 100% perfection in communication, which cannot actually exist. What I want is for the general reader – intelligent and interested but with no assumption of any background in the topic – to be able to trace the ideas as I’ve laid them out. Right now, I feel that I more or less hit that goal. Of course, it’s still possible that I’m wrong. The people who choose to reply to a thread like this are a strange and self-selected sample. Maybe the general sort of reader opened it up and was sufficiently mystified to have no opinion at all. Maybe the general sort of reader missed my clarification that I was trying to translate into more modern language. Maybe the general sort of reader missed my paragraph on Ricardo’s restriction of the scope of this problem. All of this is possible. If more people chime up with your same complaint, then I’d have to re-evaluate. But at the moment, I’m not convinced. I don’t see how I could have become any more “obvious” than my previous explicit statements without unnecessary tedium for the average reader, repeatedly telling them what I’d already told them at the beginning and what they’d already sufficiently understood. Later I’ll try to go through the parts of your post which you say are not terminological complaints. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2016, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/73 "2016-08-17T21:16:05Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > It’s a common, but still fallacious counterargument. You’ll have to explain the bit about “socially desirable”, which I’m not quite getting. And then, maybe it helps to think about it like this: what do you conceive of when you say “raw material”? Iron ore, say? Iron ore in a mine, one presumes–and a mine, not to put too fine a point on it, requires labor to be. If not iron ore in a mine, then maybe the wood in a forest? But that wood is equally available to everybody–it has use value, but no exchange value before it is worked on. This is why labor is the irreducible element of value: because nothing gets exchanged without it becomes the object of labor, whereas labor ITSELF is always a tradeable commodity (I can go to you and say, I’ll chuck down that tree for you, and it requires no previous expenditure of labor power for me to do so). Make any sense? Perhaps its easier to put it like this: if you pay me to get the ore I dig up out of a pit, you pay me not because of the raw material (which, one pit over, you might dig yourself), but because I have labored to get it. [And again, this is an imperfect analogy for Marx’s purposes, because he’s dealing with larger social and economic structures than simple one-to-one deals.] How is my term “socially desirable raw material” any more or less vague than Marx’s “socially necessary labor”? My point was not to pronounce a theory, but to give an example of how almost anything else could also be a meaningless theory. You are right that iron ore in a mine requires labor “to be.” Labor also requires iron ore in a mine “to be”. Both raw materials and labor are necessary to produce value. To reduce either one to zero seems silly. As for your third example, you claim that I do not pay you because of the raw material, but for your labor. That is true, but the reverse is also true. I do not pay you to dig an empty hole; I only pay you to dig only because of the raw material. I might also dig the same raw material myself. The same is true of timber in the forest. Your “value in terms of labor” of the chair above is likewise hard to understand. The wood costs $1,000, a willing buyer will only pay $100, but the labor costs are $120. I agree that the chair will not get made under that scenario, but to come up with a formulation that there is $120 worth of “value” (by any definition of that term) is pretty well meaningless except for its own sake. Of course, I might say that to produce that chair, I need $1000/wood, $120 labor, so my break even point is $1120. If I can sell the chair for more than that, it might be worthwhile, if not, then it will be a failed venture. But to pick out ONLY the labor cost as meaning anything in and of itself seems to be not very meaningful data. Therefore, I will paraphrase what you said above: "But that labor is equally available to everybody–it has use value, but no exchange value before it is applied to a raw material. This is why raw materials are the irreducible element of value: because no labor gets exchanged without it becom(ing?)directed towards raw materials, whereas raw materials THEMSELVES are always a tradeable commodity " How is my paraphrase any more or less true that the LTV? ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/74 "2016-08-18T05:06:21Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > How is my term “socially desirable raw material” any ķmore or less vague than Marx’s “socially necessary labor”? My point was not to pronounce a theory, but to give an example of how almost anything else could also be a meaningless theory. I didn’t say the term was vague, I just said that I did not understand what you meant. I still do not, quite. Only a socially useful raw material can be an exchangeable commodity for Marx, because who would trade for something useless? (Though Marx also has a more complicated view of what constitutes a raw material that we should probably skip here…) > [@](#): > > You are right that iron ore in a mine requires labor “to be.” Labor also requires iron ore in a mine “to be”. Both raw materials and labor are necessary to produce value. To reduce either one to zero seems silly. Yes, both labor and raw materials are necessary to produce value, obviously. But Marx argues that it is labor that determines value–that is, it is the labor embodied in the commodity produced that makes two commodities commensurate. It’s the thing that is necessary for all commodities equally (though not of course in equal amounts), _including itself_. Remember, you bought labor power, like a commodity, on the market. > [@](#): > > As for your third example, you claim that I do not pay you because of the raw material, but for your labor. That is true, but the reverse is also true. I do not pay you to dig an empty hole; I only pay you to dig only because of the raw material. I might also dig the same raw material myself. The same is true of timber in the forest. Again, it’s not about any claim that labor alone creates the commodities that we are discussing the value of. It’s that when that commodity is made, it is socially necessary labor time that determines its value. Of course you need something to have me work on, because you need me to produce an exchangeable commodity. I am on a phone or else wouöd give you a quote, but check p. 133 of Capital on this. I can provide a quote tomorrow. > [@](#): > > Your “value in terms of labor” of the chair above is likewise hard to understand. The wood costs $1,000, a willing buyer will only pay $100, but the labor costs are $120. I agree that the chair will not get made under that scenario, but to come up with a formulation that there is $120 worth of “value” (by any definition of that term) is pretty well meaningless except for its own sake. Well. Now a, as I said, there is no $120 dollars of value in that chair, if socially necessary labor time is only at $60. That’s its value–that’s what it will exchange for on the market. Marx largely elides material costs in his analysis at this stage, though he brings the in later, largely because they are abstractly assumed to be similar. Before you run with this and shout, aha, the ninkompoop, I’ll explain tomorrow why this is sound here. Have to refresh my memory of the argument. > [@](#): > > "But that labor is equally available to everybody–it has use value, but no exchange value before it is applied to a raw material. This is why raw materials are the irreducible element of value: because no labor gets exchanged without it becom(ing?)directed towards raw materials, whereas raw materials THEMSELVES are always a tradeable commodity " Right, but the last sentence is precisely where it breaks down. Because raw materials are NOT tradeable wirhout labor. They just sit in the ground. They are nobody’s possession, even. Marx is coming from commodity production here, not from speculation on iron futures.] ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/75 "2016-08-18T05:13:44Z")
So what does that mean? What is this determined value? Why does it have to be socially necessary labor time? That is circular logic. Why can’t you see it? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/76 "2016-08-18T13:03:04Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > Right, but the last sentence is precisely where it breaks down. Because raw materials are NOT tradeable wirhout labor. They just sit in the ground. They are nobody’s possession, even. Marx is coming from commodity production here, not from speculation on iron futures.] If I own a piece of land, and sell the mineral rights to a mining company, does the value of the land come from socially necessary labor, or somewhere else? IOW, what is the difference between socially necessary labor, and exchange value? How do we know what is socially necessary until we ask (via pricing) who thinks it is necessary by bidding for it? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/77 "2016-08-18T16:48:34Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > So what does that mean? What is this determined value? Why does it have to be socially necessary labor time? That is circular logic. Why can’t you see it? Well, if I were given to snark, I’d say I don’t see it because it’s not there. Seriously, don’t you think that it were as simple as that, that it’s just circular reasoning, somebody would have pointed that out by now? You keep asking “what is this determined value.” What are you looking for here? A price? Then you’re still misunderstanding what Marx is arguing. Price is not something that is independent of everything and therefore can be used to say “what the value is”. Price itself is a consequence of social relations, of exchange processes. But it is, all other things being equal (and this is a theoretical foreshortening for the first volume of Capital that Marx goes a ways to expand on only much, much later) determined by socially necessary labor time. In simple terms, again: the reason you get 2 ounces of gold for 60 pounds of wheat (or whatever) is because these commodities embody the same amount of socially necessary labor time: they have the same value, a value which is however not fixable in any terms that lie outside the process. I’m guessing you’d like me to say something like “And when we tally all this up, the value of this thing is $90”. But the point is that the money, too, is just embodied labor–it’s just a different form of the commodity. So saying “2 ounces of gold are equal in value to 60 pounds of wheat are equal to $90” isn’t any more a determination of value than “2 ounces of gold are equal in value to 60 pounds of wheat” is. And it has to be socially necessary labor time because, as I noted, labor is the only irreducible element to the process of commodity production. (And conversely, too, it’s the only thing the naked man can always sell…) ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/78 "2016-08-18T16:59:15Z")
> [@Enterprise](#): > > And it has to be socially necessary labor time because, as I noted, labor is the only irreducible element to the process of commodity production. We have already seen how socially necessary labor can subtract value, in the example of labor turning $1000 worth of lumber into a $100 chair. So it’s not irreducible - it can be absent altogether, even for objects that have exchange value. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/79 "2016-08-18T17:00:32Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > If I own a piece of land, and sell the mineral rights to a mining company, does the value of the land come from socially necessary labor, or somewhere else? > > IOW, what is the difference between socially necessary labor, and exchange value? How do we know what is socially necessary until we ask (via pricing) who thinks it is necessary by bidding for it? > > Regards, > Shodan In Marxian terms, the land has no “value,” for at least two reasons in this scenario: a) you are not actually exchanging it (value being socially necessary labor time embodied in a duality [in Marxian terms, actually, a dialectic] of use value and exchange value); and because b) it’s not a commodity (though these two points are obviously related). In your scenario, you keep holding the title to the land, yes? Then what price you’re paid for your mineral rights is just rent (for that matter, I believe Adam Smith would agree, though I’m not sure). Rent has nothing to do with commodity production in the capitalist economy, so it’s not touched on by the labor theory of value at all. The difference between socially necessary labor time and exchange value is that exchange value is just one side of a coin: use value and exchange value combine in value; value is socially necessary labor time. And no, as I’ve said, we do not know what this “value” is (that is, how many commodities a are equal in value to how many commodities b). ---
**Author:** ![Enterprise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/76d3ee/32.png) [@Enterprise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enterprise)\ **Post date:** [August 18, 2016, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606/80 "2016-08-18T17:03:36Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > We have already seen how socially necessary labor can subtract value, in the example of labor turning $1000 worth of lumber into a $100 chair. So it’s not irreducible - it can be absent altogether, even for objects that have exchange value. > > Regards, > Shodan I don’t get that counter example, sorry. Explain how that means labor is not irreducible, please? There’s labor necessary to make the lumber, and there’s labor necessary to make the chair? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/labor-theory-of-value/756606.md?page=5)