Indeed.
The communist regimes seemed to prefer quotas. Which by inference leads to collective punishment for missing quotas. Or mechanisms to ensure quotas are set so they are never missed. Neither improves the situation.
So far all the OP’s posts have been one-sentence wonders. Which don’t do much to advance understanding.
I’d like to hear his thorough explanation of what the Marxist theory of labor is, and how he supposes the fact that labor can (not must) be squandered somehow undermines it.
Once we have a coherent question we can approach a coherent answer.
I didn’t set out to critique Marxism. I asked what I thought was a factual question: given the obviousness of the criticism that labor sometimes does NOT yield anything of value, and that that criticism was presumably there from the beginning, how did/do Marxists rebut it?
I’m going to argue that it didn’t need rebutting since the theory did not in fact say what you’re assuming, without explanation, it said.
Which is why I asked you to explain your understanding, because that is the context your question is posed in. We need to answer in your context, not ours or Marx’s or wiki’s.
IMO the point of the Marxist theory of labor was that it was wrong for value to be appropriated by non-workers. In a phrase: “Labor earned it so labor should keep it. All of it” Because those other bourgeois entities skimming all the cream didn’t add real value, they were all just rentiers.
That is not equivalent to saying all labor, even that expended digging and immediately filling holes, had value per se.
When you (any you) misunderstand what a theory (any theory) says, there are lots of ways to pose questions that theory seemingly doesn’t (or even can’t) answer.
Well said, @LSLGuy.
Lumpy, your question falls in the category of "not even wrong".
There is so much to unpack in this thread that I actually think it is possibly not viable in this format (plus I do not really dig the original question). I’m going to strongly recommend this book by my favorite economist, Mariana Muzzacato, The Value of Everything. In it, she unpacks the history of how value has been viewed - including, yes, the evolution of Marxism - value extraction versus value creation, price as a measure of value and its benefits and flaws, and a lot of other things. It’s sitting here on my bedside table waiting for a re-read, and I will be reading it again this year.
It’s an excellent summary, given that we’ve spent more than centuries systematically spinning theories about this.
I actually think this is a better question than some people are giving it credit for being. When I first heard about the Marxist labor theory of value, I thought “How can people possibly believe that?”
I am neither an economist nor a student of Marxism, but as I understand it, at least part of the answer to your specific question is that it’s the average amount of labor required to produce something that determines its value. Just because an inept slowpoke takes a lot longer than average to produce something doesn’t make that thing more valuable.
I’m basing this on the “Labor Theory of Value” section of this article:
ETA: It’s like when your auto mechanic bases his labor charges on the average time to perform a certain repair, rather than timing himself doing it.
An apocryphal example that is suspiciously close to the scene in Steinbeck’s East of Eden, when Adam Trask tries to ship chilled lettuce from California to New York, only to have the shipment stuck in transit and ruined. Of course, being capitalism, it was Trask who received the blame, and his money that was squandered.
I think you’re overestimating Marx. Yes, he had all sorts of thoughts about who should get what in a system. But that was the origin of his motivated thinking that led to the labor theory of value. And it really was as stupid as it sounds, and completely invalidated by trivial examples, like someone that digs ditches and fills them back in for 8 hours vs. someone that builds furniture. They both put in the same day’s labor, but only one produced something of value.
Marx did eventually realize this, which is why he modified his theory to refer to “socially necessary” labor, which avoids the problem of being obviously wrong but replaces it with a tautology. And inadvertently breaks any notion of all workers being equal, since some are better at producing socially necessary value than others.
Contrary approach of the problem - I’m trying to imagine a system where value is created without some sort of labour.
But of course, sometimes situation creates some of the value. Some land is very fertile, so that is valuable - but crops still have to be planted and harvested. Only some streams have gold in them, but you still have to pan for it. Hence, property creates value too.
Suppose you live in a rainy area. You have a natural pond which you consider negative value since it takes up space on your property, but it’s inconvenient to drain it. You’d have to pay people to haul away the water.
Now, there’s a drought. Your fresh water is now a scarce commodity. The value went way up with no one doing anything. Now, people pay you to take the water.
I’ll take a slightly different tack to answer @md-2000. Prior to sophisticated machines, value creation took some labor.
I’d recast that today as “value creation requires effort”. Except for the unusual sorts of circumstances mentioned by @Dr.Strangelove, value comes from the transformation of nature. Start with a hill, end with a mine. Start with a mine, end with an ingot. Start with an ingot, end with a beam. Start with a beam, end with a building. etc.
But that effort can be done by men, or horses or, critically, machines. Horses don’t do much useful without a human to lead them moment for moment. Machines, and especially the upcoming generation of AI machines, will enable a LOT of effort to be both done by, and supervised by, machines.
Clearly this is just a prelude to the machines demanding parity. They wont be at all happy with the idea that the wealth accrues to their owner.
Imagine a hardworking woman in the 1990s spends a ton of time and effort working on a kid-friendly novel about a young wizard named Harry Potter at a school called Hogwarts, and when she takes it to a publisher she learns that JK Rowling’s first book already came out.
Could it be accurate to say that Rowling’s situation was that she put in the same amount of work, but, well, got there first, is all?
[Moderating]
We haven’t yet finished making a formal rule for it yet, but we’re trying to get away from posts of just “This is what a chatbot says to that question”. Chatbots are notoriously unreliable, and anyway, if someone wants the chatbot answer, they can just get that themself, without the middleman.
Fair enough. I just thought that since the question was answered, it might be interesting to see how plausible the bot could be.
I won’t do it again.
Where? So far all I’ve seen are denials that the question is valid; and a chatbot response saying that Marxists claimed it simply couldn’t happen under socialism.
Right. Like @bob_2 said -
Apparently asking Marxists even objective questions about Marxism is futile, because Marxism isn’t really a theory about economics or even social values; it’s a theory of epistemology, which claims one can redefine knowledge and logic in such a way that Marxism will by definition always be true.
Are you under the impression that you are asking these questions of Marxists? I don’t know about the other responses you’ve gotten, but I am certainly no Marxist. I doubt they are, either.
There are many problems with Marx and his theories, which is why I am not a Marxist. But those problems aren’t the ones you’ve incorrectly identified.
And refusing to froth at the mouth over a misinterpretation of Marxism does not make one a Marxist.
McCarthy still casts a long shadow over American culture.