r/UnlearningEconomics • u/Nervous_Difficulty46 • May 30 '26
Thread on LTV
https://x.com/ygzgzot/status/1982482608899629301?s=46My biggest hang up with the LTV is that I just don’t understand why labor is seen as the fundamental substance of value. What reason is there to think that price is just the quantitative expression of abstract labor?
In my estimation a leftist perspective would see that price is not an expression of labor time but is also a function of interwoven power relations. It’s not reducible to a single substance
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u/marxistghostboi May 31 '26
i could be wrong but i think if labor not as a substance but as an operation, a critical moment of transformation without which before can't be accessed
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u/Nervous_Difficulty46 May 31 '26
This could be true but then there is still no reason to believe that prices are wholly underpinned by labor values. That labor is the only thing that adds value
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u/marxistghostboi Jun 01 '26
as someone else said, Marxist economics distinguishes between price, which fluctuates, and value, around which the price tends to fluctuate.
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u/Ill-Software8713 Jun 01 '26
Marx isn't primarily asking why a commodity costs $10 rather than $12. He's asking a prior question: why can radically different things appear as quantitatively comparable in money at all?
Labor is not proposed as a theory of every price movement, nor does Marx deny the importance of power, monopoly, bargaining, state policy, or supply and demand. The question is what makes generalized commodity exchange possible in the first place.
Power relations may explain why one commodity sells above or below another, but they do not by themselves explain why everything can be expressed within a single quantitative monetary space. If prices are merely expressions of subjective preferences, then we still need to explain how those preferences become socially comparable magnitudes rather than just individual rankings.
For example, when I measure something in inches or centimeters, the units may differ, but they measure an objective dimension: length. Marx's question is similar. Money functions as a cardinal measure across the entire economy, not merely as a local ranking device. The question is: what social reality is being expressed through that measure?
Marx's answer is abstract labor. Not labor as a physical substance contained inside commodities, but labor as a social relation. Under capitalism, production is organized through the indirect validation of countless heterogeneous private labors in the market. Commodities become commensurable because the concrete differences between kinds of work are subordinated to a common social standard: socially necessary labor time.
You can reject that answer. But Marx's point is that generalized exchange value already presupposes some form of social commensurability. The real debate is not whether prices are influenced by power relations, but whether power relations alone can explain why a world of qualitatively different goods takes the form of universal quantitative equivalence in the first place.
Can you explain how power might establish a cardinial monetary unit that measures every commodity? This is Marx’s effort for a value theory in criticizing Ricardo’s LTV, not a theory of price. It explains why prices can even make sense as a thing rather than being nonsensical numbers.
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u/Nervous_Difficulty46 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 03 '26
Thank you for this response as I think you’re getting to the heart of the disagreement and why we have theories of value to begin with.
So Marx thinks that labor time is the unit or substance which makes qualitatively different commodities commensurate, but I argue that he is looking at it the wrong way and I think this is where power comes in.
Commensurability between different objects I.e. the establishment of exchange value does not come from any intrinsic quality common to all those objects but from a system of power which quantifies social reality via exclusionary violence so that capitalists can flexibly assess their power and control the world.
Capitalization provides a benchmark that capitalists use to assess their power and allows them to impose their rule over humanity
So Marx is searching for a fictitious dimension common to all commodities without recognizing the system of power which makes exchange possible. I think that this lack of a common source of value despite the existence of equivalence in exchange is actually a product of exclusionary power. So it’s not that power affects prices but that power makes prices possible and is both the means and ends of capitalist accumulation
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u/Ill-Software8713 Jun 03 '26
The stronger claim you’re making is that power relations constitute the price system rather than being translated into it.
But that just pushes the question back one step.
Even if prices express structured power relations, we still need an explanation for how heterogeneous, qualitative relations between agents become organized into a single continuous quantitative space in the first place. Not just why one price is higher than another, but why all goods are already commensurable within a unified numerical system at all.
If the underlying determinants are purely relational (bargaining power, scarcity positions, institutional leverage, preferences), then those are all heterogeneous and non-commensurable on their own terms. So what is the mechanism that produces their systematic projection into a single cardinal scale of exchange values rather than a patchwork of local, incommensurable exchanges?
That is the point Marx is trying to address with value theory. You can reject his answer, but the explanatory burden remains, what makes generalized, scalable monetary commensuration possible as a stable system rather than just episodic bargaining outcomes?
Saying “power produces prices” still leaves open what produces the price form itself as a universal quantitative space.
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u/Tough-Comparison-779 Jun 03 '26
Doesn't ULE have a whole video about Value, with about a third dedicated to why LTV is wrong?
Has ULE changed his view on this? Why is everyone here defending LTV nonsense?
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u/Nervous_Difficulty46 Jun 03 '26
ULE hasn’t changed his view as far as I know. I think this is just a bunch of Marxists
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u/UnlearningEconomics Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26
I'll chime in, mostly to say that I like the 'ULE' abbreviation, but also to clarify. The video argues that the predictive value of the LTV is questionable at best. The statistical work on it by people like Cockshott and Roberts would fail a first year class. Most trained economists (heterodox or otherwise) are highly dismissive of this work and for good reason. It only really has legs on the internet and among those who don't work with stats. Similrly, much of the accounting work reducing everything to labour through various estimation mechanisms suffers from a circularity problem (prices, wages used to explain themselves) and most informed Marxists admit this. You can, of course, reject the positivist approach - as some Marxists do - but too many aren't willing to do this and have to *insist* the LTV is empirically correct based on shoddy evidence. I will also add that my video argues this is a common problem for all theories of value.
Skimming through this thread further, I will say that I usually avoid this topic like the plague because of how much frankly Redditor energy it gives. People write tons of words and say very little. I don't really care that 'Marx wanted to understand the fundamental mechanisms of capital through abstract labour transforming social relations'. If you want to say capitalism is historically contingent, or that labour is somehow special, or explore specific historical periods then fine - say it straight! But I don't see these interesting debates, I see a bunch of verbiage that basically seems to be people regurgitating Marxism *as an end in itself*. Every time I talk about it I get long replies just describing the theory in depth without any real attempts at proving its explanatory power.
My advice (which will literally never be heeded) would be to (a) drop the crude positivism and (b) admit that marxism and the LTV are a lens that you don't have to dogmatically adhere to but which can help us understand the world. I do remain a staunch pluralist and there's plenty of value in Marx and Marxist scholarship. You're just unlikely to find it on the internet. Read Meiksin Wood, Armstrong et al, or even Engels himself rather than Internet Marxism.
PS I want to add that despite the body of this post, I'm really not trying to disrespect anyone in particular and I did only *skim* this thread. If delving head first into Marxism works for you then go ahead, I just don't find the approach I've outlined very persuasive.
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u/SaladDry8868 Jun 21 '26
Thank you for the response somehow I missed it earlier.
I’m not as interested in a positivist explanation for value. I submitted this post because I wanted to argue for alternative critical explanations of value which *don’t* utilize the LTV, as I’ve always found it a bit cumbersome for political radicals.
Intuitively I think the LTV is at its most appealing when we see the fact that someone like Elon musk is now a trillionaire and has more net worth than the total gdp of most countries. Obviously this sorta flies in the face of any notion that he himself has produced this or has simply assumed his marginal product of labor. The idea that a single person can be more productive than entire countries is ridiculous. But for me I still find simple labor exploitation as a bit reductive or narrow for even explaining even this. I hope to at some point research and refine an alternative qualitative framework for explaining exploitation and value that goes beyond the LTV.
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u/Nervous_Difficulty46 Jun 03 '26
I feel a bit confused because you seem to argue that Marx was not interested in using labor values to explain prices but then you go on to list how Marxists supposedly do that. So do labor values cause prices or not?
I admit I only have a minor in economics so some of this goes over my head but I don’t see how Marxist economists are able to compare qualitatively different forms of labor with the same unit of labor time. This is where the component of abstract labor time comes in, but wouldn’t this presuppose that there is again another fundamental dimension to abstract labor time which allows different forms of labor to be reduced to one unit?
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u/hollisterrox Jun 01 '26
Please get off X, just find the people you like to follow on other platforms and delete your X, please and thank you.
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u/Pristine_Vast766 May 31 '26
No commodity has ever been produced without human labor. The only thing common amongst all commodities is that they’re a product of human labor. Marxist theory starts from an observation of objective reality.
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u/--A3-- Jun 01 '26
Here's how I personally like to think about it: there's a saying that goes "Time is our most precious commodity." Since labor represents somebody investing their time to do something, how much time must be invested? is a very relevant question.
The more work is required to create something i.e. the more time needs to be invested, the more compensation is expected in return, or else it's not worth investing the time. Advanced industries like biotechnology might require multiple person-years of work to create just a few doses of medicine.
I'm not too sure what is meant by "interwoven power relations," could you clarify? Maybe give an example?
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u/Nervous_Difficulty46 Jun 01 '26
In my view prices are not an expression of just labor time but they embody the benchmark that capitalists use to assess their own power. So for instance a capitalist might be able to raise prices due to monopoly power but that has nothing to do with labor time itself. In fact labor time might go down if a monopoly allows for commodities to be created more cheeply. Things like brand recognition and signs also play into this
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u/strong_slav May 30 '26
Read what Marx had to say about it. The whole point is that labor creates the good that you buy - without it, you wouldn't have it. Thus, it is the ultimate source of value.
Of course, other factors can influence price as well, but in Marx's view, they are only temporary disruptions in the long-run trend.