Does "socially necessary labor time" mean the aggregate subjective value of labor time?

Which mistakes?

Seeing value backwards. Thinking that value comes from suffering and not from fulfilling someone's demand. All value comes from work but most work creates zero value.

Go away and take your shitty maymay with you.

It absolutely is.

Because for Marx value comes out of social labour.

Marx actually says that if a good has no use-value (i.e. does not fulfill someone's "demand"), it's not a commodity and therefore has no value.

Was just about to post that webm.

what is this webm from

So, you need a completely extra definition of value to make any sense of it. A definition which by the way, makes the LTV completely redundant.
If value is subjective to the person, and marginal to the units, then value does not intrinsically come from labor.

Borrow money, make an enterprise, and put all people to socially produce something; and you'll see that not always that creates any value. Expensive products that have more labor have a high value, but that's because things that have a low value and are expensive are not produced by the free market; you see, it doesn't go the other way, having a high social necessity to produce something doesn't mean it has a high value.

I always love laughing at marxists for being this retarded.

But what is the position with regard to more complicated labour which, being labour of greater intensity and greater specific gravity, rises above the general level? This kind of labour resolves itself into simple labour; it is simple labour raised to a higher power, so that for example one day of skilled labour may equal three days of simple labour. The laws governing this reduction do not concern us here. It is, however, clear that the reduction is made, for, as exchange-value, the product of highly skilled labour is equivalent, in definite proportions, to the product of simple average labour; thus being equated to a certain amount of this simple labour.

You really need to work on your reading comprehension if you can't comprehend what value refers to in the LTV and how is it different from use-value. Try reading the first chapter of Capital vol. 1 again before you further embarrass yourself:
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/ch01.htm

Brendan McCooney's Law of Value series: youtube.com/watch?v=dGT-hygPqUM&list=PL3F695D99C91FC6F7.

At which point you already have value in the form of money (a type of variable capital, on top of this).

Because Marx absolutely does not deny the influence of social demand for a type of commodity or service.

It'd be nice if you made even half an attempt to understand what Marx's LTV was like and what he meant by value. You're just looking like the worst "basic economics!"-spouting lolbert who thinks he knows what he's talking about after taking the same Econ 101 class we've all taken in high school.

KEK

Value is not subjective, use value is you dumbass

Wrong link read this:
marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm

Use-value is subjective to the person. It is a different concept than value which is the aggregate of social labor. Likewise exchange value is a seperate concept from both value and use-value.

Social labor is determined across an entire society with a particular prevailing mode of production.

Somewhere a villiage is missing its idiot.

Imagine being this autistic

Imagine defending a failed ideology 24/7 without being able to even defend it.

You're trying so hard to be edgy and "le epig own xd" us that you forgot to have an argument entirely.

I would explain it to you but it's kind of late in my time zone and I need to sleep. Maybe tomorrow?

Are you dumb? Of course you need different definitions, they are about different things. Just because Marx uses words differently than your average American dumbass does not mean he was wrong.

Please, explain to me why you need a marginal subjective definition of value to explain that labor doesn't actually create value inside you labor theory of value.

Just admit it already, you have never read anything by Marx about the LTV.

Yeah, sure.

KEK

But I don't my absolutely epic trole xd friend.

...

Nigga you were BTFO'd after your second post and you have been autistically screeching since

Really makes me think.

One last (You) for the big boy. He deserved it, after all.

What second definition you dumb autist?

Value is created by labour because labour, according to thermoeconomics, is the ability to implement energy

Energy is valuable, labour creates value not because the commodity it created is of use, as that is use value, but because the labourer has the ability to utilize energy

I am not a Marxists

Its okay, I understand not everyone is equal hence autists like you have a hard time grasping political economy

Every. Single. Post avoiding as hard as possible to not explain the LTV.

So the higher exchange value of labor of the more skilled labor is dependent on average use -value? Then how does labor value come into play?

What a LARPing overdose.
Except "implementing energy" creates no intrinsic value.
Except you can "implement energy" in millions of ways without creating any value. Because value is marginal, and subjective to the desire of each one of us. Because if something were to materialize, with no use of energy, it would still have value to us. Because reducing the energy required and price, but not necessarily the value.

When you slowly realize that
is not really a meme. Literally shilling for something they can't defend, for a theory that makes no sense and serves no purpose other than political shilling.

What a dumb autist
Irrelevant, that corresponds to use-value, energy can be implemented by labour, therefore labour creates value, energy is valuable only insofar as it can be implememted, the caloric value of a star millions of years ago is irrelevant because it cannot be implememted by me, unlike the energy of the sun. The key difference is that I can labour with the energy of our sun, therefore all forms of value are to be created by implementing this energy and my labour, whether or not you, as a different indigidual find what I created valiable is none of my concern

Yes, like your mom giving birth to your dumbass, you are talking about the use of the applied energy (a commodity), you have no use value to society, but this doesn't mean the labour of your mom was valueless, as it could have been used to breed someone who isn't retarded

Sorry I don't discuss fantasies

Reducing the energy requires more labour, as you need labour and energy to create machinery and techniques to reduce energy, you didn't reduce the composition of capital, you just changed it

Besides, if the reduction of energy comes from a reduction in supply, then the energy becomes more valuable, or are you denying supply and demand curves

Dumb autist

You are wrong, commodities must have use-value, otherwise they won't be exchanged. If a thing is not exchanged, it's not a commodity.

The value of a commodity however cannot come from use-value, because use-value is based on the individual characteristics of particular things, and in exchange we are dealing with quantities, which abstracts those away.

Value comes from labor because the only thing that remains is that each commodity has use-value: they are part of society's division of labor. However, since we are dealing with quantities, labor itself is abstracted away, too! Instead of being based on particular labor, it can only be based on socially necessary labor time.

...

I dont understand how I was wrong, can you explain further?

I'm so glad I'm not this delusional and stupid.
so value= energy? LARPing doesn't work buddie, it only makes you look fucking dumb. You can LARP with your friends and feel smart, but to the outside you are a supreme retard who clearly is completely clueless.
Except not all forms of this energy create value. Except reducing that energy used doesn't reduce value. Except humans find value on commodities that were never touched by other humans.

Woah, if only we ignore literally every part where you are wrong, you are almost right. Your entire framework has only a billion holes. Economic frameworks are taken seriously and are typically thrown in the trash if they have one or two holes. It gives the impression that people defending it are biased delusional lunatics that learned their ideas in an echo chamber.

Maybe I just can't read anymore but it sounds like you are implying that labor always creates value, which is obviously not true, since value only exists in exchange.

Lol

No, you delusional idiot who didn't even read my post entirely; you were wrong, and I explained you why, that means you are stupid.

Value exists in energy, implementing energy is valuable, therefore labour has value

Whether or not said implementation of value is useful for you is of concern of the definition of use-value

Stop making me cringe.

You are not as smart as you think you are.

I reached to the point where you implied
And realized you are stupid enough to belive I am a humanist, so not even going to bother anymore

No u

Reducing the energy needed to create a product intrinsically makes it's use value less. Your confusing use value and exchange value because you are a fucking moron.
Like a diamond perhaps? A diamonds use value is the time and energy spent discovering the diamond, and then processing it. If diamonds would simply be found in the forest, then it's use value would be that of any other rock.

Lol

Probably more /liberty/ famrade, that guy was more le invisible hand than Aryan magic.

Why the fuck would an annihl give a shit about value? Also stop talking this 'energy' shit. It's spooky as fuck.

So why is artificial scarcity a thing?

The helicopter meme almost seems to suggest otherwise.

Nope.

Nope. Reducing the energy needed to create a product does not reduce its value. Increasing the volume of unites and distribution to the population reduces value because value is marginal.

If you just decrease the costs, and the same enterprises produce the same products at the same amount, people will value the produce the same.

No, idiot, they find the diamond valuable even if no human spend any time discovering it or mining it, people find water valuable without any human working to make rivers flow, people find all sorts of aspects that cannot be altered by humans like sunlight and weather to be have its value which is a demonstrable FACT. Surprise surprise, commies wrong yet again.

Any type of artificial scarcity is proof the LTV is wrong and that reducing the socially necessary labor time doesn't reduce the value of a product if people do not have a unit fulfilled in their list of marginal uses. Artificial scarcity is a nice solid proof of why you idiotic LARPers are wrong.

Can labor value be determined by the exchange value of energy? Is labor value quantifiable?

Idk maybe because that is dumb???

So you want to be humiliated even further?

I guess you could, you could quantify labour using watts, but it would extremely difficult, besides electric energy is not the only form of energy

I said it before and I'll say it again, you are delusional, you do not realize how stupid and pathetic you are. You do not realize that the stuff you say makes absolutely no sense; you think you are making a point when you actually aren't. You are a prime example of mr.stupid.

Emphasizing again: you are too retarded to realize how retarded you are.

Lol, your neck vein is poping again

Now amuse us even more, tell us how reducing the energy necessary in the produtcion of a commodity won't reduce the overall quality of the commodity, let's use an example:

Let's just work with gas here, I feel you'd struggle if we added other inputs

Tell me how reducing the amount of gas needed to fully bake a cake, which would result in an undercooked cake, allows you to create the same form of value

I have no reason to reply to someone this stupid and ignorant about the subject he's talking about. I'm only doing it out of pity:

You are fucking dumb. An unbaked cake and a baked cake is not the same fucking commodity, you fucking IDIOT. You are making arguments, and yet you don't even know what's being argued. You are fucking delusional.

Let's assume I figure out a way to reduce the energy I use to make a cake, I make better tools, and improve the efficiency of my oven. How the fuck does that decrease the value of the cake? It fucking doesn't. People will judge it to have the same value, and buy it for the same price, and I'll make some profit off of it.

The value is only reduced if the amount of cake distributed to the market starts to increase, fulfilling more marginal needs and thus reducing how much people want another cake.

tbh microwaves and induction cookers can cook with less energy than a conventional oven because of less heat waste

Austrians, everyone.

But if you are a bakery firm you need to inbest more labour and money into a microwave or an induction ovem

Exactly, Which means you can produce even more value, as youmcan implement this energy more efficiently

There is a key difference between reducing energy and increasing efficiency, our Holla Forumsyp friend is struggling with it lol

Yet you claim here that you can create equal value while just decreasing the energy expense lol

You are a dumb autists, keep posting because its fun to see you sperg

And you need to invest energy to do that, you are changing the composition of the capital
You cannot get a more efficient oven for free because we do not live in fully automated luxury anarcho-communism

It doesnt??? Lol you autist

Wrong, thats price

You are literally too stupid to understand the point I made. Also, artificial scarcity can only affect the economy at large with overwhelming government force.

God she's so hot, imagine waking up next to her with her making that face saying that you're the best she's ever had. Why can't my life be like that.

Right in the feels

Trips to confirm that your too beta for even 2d

Sauce?

Holla Forums literally a parody of itself.
Yes, we do that all the time.
Yes, except that's irrelevant to what we are discussing, and no, you don't need energy to reduce the energy required, it would be merely a matter of practical knowledge.
So, basically, the most important part of what you had to answer, you omitted. Congratulations. You are certified retard.
Wrong, that's value. If I make the same amount of cakes with the same quality only reducing my energy and efforts, people judge cakes to have the same value as before.

mfw
Seriously, what the FUCK is wrong with you?

He's conflating price and value

Do elaborate.

Yes, by maintaining the capitalist system, which, I'm sad to say, isn't just people exchanging things voluntarily. It's a mode of production, where many work for the few.

...

Then kindly read this post again you autist

Thermodinamically impossible, you cannot get free energy

Lol I know Austrians like to deny facts but this is too much

Gabriel dropout

So why does it exist? As that socially neccisery labor time lowers, many commodities are are made cheaper and more breakable.

How is quality dependent on labor time? If I modify the process, become more skilled at more job, or invest in more capital, I can reduce the labor time of the commodity without reducing quality.

Ignore that reply, I posted too early

So why does it exist? It seems with enough abundance, we wouldn't need to work as much with an amount of food available. Also as that socially necessary labor time lowers, many commodities are made with more planned obsolescence in order to justify producing more, when many can be made out of sterner stuff and last longer. Of course this may not be purely related to TLTOV but nonetheless it is still a major problem with the profit motive.

I'm unsure if it is entirely, but part of increasing production for less time may include adding things that are less than savory, or with planned obsolescence, to name a few.

EVERY
TIME

Right-Libertarians didn't exist until the 20th Century.

Hmmm, let's look back at shall we?
>and with the average degree of skill and intensity prevalent at the time.
Damn, being illiterate must be rough.

Thanks for helping, Nihilist guy. It is nice to see that some non-marxists can read our stuff.

Artificial scarsity drives up the exchange value of a given commodity within a given society, not its value. Exchange value is fluid and subject to fluctuations in the market. By depressing the exchange value of a given commodity, you raise the exchange value of other commodities, because the exchange value of commodities is relative to one another. Say you want to exchange an amount of gold for a diamond. Both gold and diamond are commodified using whatever methods the society uses at their respect rates. Gold has a certain value (abstracted labor time) as does diamond. Each also has its own exchange value, and exchange value is shown by how much of one commodity is required to exchange it for another commodity.

Are you following? Do you see where this is going?

When gold is exchanged for diamond, the exchange value of diamond is measured in a quantifiable amount of gold (eg. one carat unoccluded princess cut diamond can be exchanged for one pound of gold). Now, here is where artificial scarsity comes into play. When the exchange value of a diamond is driven up, that is reflected in the exchange value of those commodities which can be exchanged for a diamond. With the exchange value of a diamond inflated, that drives down the exchange value of other commodities like gold. Now, instead of one diamond costing one pound of gold it now costs two pounds of gold. This diminishes the exchange value of gold not only relative to diamonds but relative to other commodities as well. This phenomena is how you get fluctuations in the prices of commodities even when the socially necessary labor time to produce them does not change.

Its not that simply, merely taking more time to produce a good doesn't add value, it juat means you are wasting it, since it is still an expense the firm has to pay for, as the firm has to pay wages, people get confused with the increase in production costs

There is a minimum amount of time it requires to do something, think of a racecar lapping a racetrack, you cannot keep decreasing the time it takes you to lap it forever, its impossible

Right, value is a social average, not a thing that can be measured by looking at the production of a commodity at just one place.

I dont agree with that, I think value can be defined by the objective and scientific amount of energy that is required to produce a commodity, even at an individual level, labour power is included

This doesnt mean that the more energy it is utilized the better, but how efficient it's production was

Okay, now I am confused by what you are saying. Value in the LTOV is a social abstraction. It does not work on individual commodities but rather as an average of the production of all like commodities in a given society.

The average degree of skill and intensity refers to the current industry average at producing Product A. This average is used to differentiate between marginal producers of the same product, and not as a comparison between Product A and B, which may require different skills/intensity qualitatively.

This board is still good sometimes.

Proofs?

What a coincidence that bourgeois economists discovered that LTV was "backwards and unhelpful" after Das Kapital was published.

Capitol Volumn 1:

I do not deserve my hammar and sickle.

I'm guessing this means the higher-skilled labor is multiplied by a factor of simple value, where the simple labor is the unitary amount? Then how does society determine this multiplier? Is it the average of each individual's subjective value? Also how is this relative to energy if both products require the same energy input (except the initial input due to training the higher skilled laborer)?

A skilled laborer has invested labor into learning the skills that he employs in the creation of a commodity, as did any individuals who mat have taught him his skill. Think of his education as a commodity itself. Thus the commodity that the skilled laborer produces contains that added value as well.

I honestly do not know what the nihilist was talking about in regards to energy. Hopefully he is still around to explain.

I knew there was a reason this board went down in quality. No lolberts posting here.

If the heart is what pumps the blood through the body, why can't I use a heart as a water pump?

So, you need a completely extra definition to make any sense of the heart, that it must be part of a living being. A definition which by the way, makes the heart redundant. For, if the person is alive to begin with, what would they need a heart for? You have to face the cold hard truth that everything is subjective and based on my feelings.

I always love laughing at doctors for being this retarded.

Holy shit you are really dumb

The LTV is about the value of commodities, it's about why you can say that x amount of commodity A = y amount of commodity B. Things become commodities when you exchange them; you can only exchange them because they are useful for somebody, that is, they have use-value.

Do you believe all useful things to be commodities?

...

And what do you exchange them for? What do you actually pay for a commodity? You don't just simply give money according to how happy the thing makes you, surely? If you expect you are all in all better off getting a thing in exchange for the money the price asks for, you do that. If a thing makes you very, very, very happy and the price is very low, you don't pay extra on top of what the price is, you just pay what the price is. Right?

I have never understood this distinction between value and price.

The world works by price, not value.

You can work your ass all days and you would make less than a computer engineers simply because his shit has better price.

What is this mythical value? Work time?

Read Value, Price and Profit. Value is the most important thing to understand if you want to know how capitalism functions.

But I already do, it's fucking supply and demand.

You want something, I give it to you with a price.

Answer this:
And the firms producing stuff, most stuff you see in a Walmart and so on, is that stuff usually produced by sentimental artisans who really care deeply about what they are doing? Or is it rather the case that mass-scale production is fundamentally steered by people who care about making money, so that if profits get low in a particular sector they are in and high in another, they try to move into that ASAP?

So, in summary: Some shit is super-important to you, but that doesn't necessarily mean you pay much money for it. You pay money, if you have to. This utility economists speak of, it's like an on-off switch. You make a decision whether to get a thing or not based on that. Commodities must have utility. But what the thing costs, if it is a mass-produced thing, doesn't have much to do with utility, since people don't shower a business with money just because it produces a super-important thing like food. There is a potentially huuuge maximum they would pay that business if they had no other way of obtaining the important thing, but what they actually pay is lowered by competition. Sooo, how low can the price get?

The price can be low as the buyer wants to sell it.

Something can be super-important to you, but it doesn't matter jack to someone else. This is why value is worthless.

...

When Marx talks about value, he is specifically talking about exchange value. This differs from price, because price is just the expression of value in the form of money.

Markets conceal the production processes behind them, where value is created. Markets can only redistribute value, in the form of price. Prices can fluctuate according to supply and demand, but they cannot explain profits (at an aggregate level) without looking into the production processes.
Just read the damn thing, it's not long and addresses all the questions you may have.

The exchange value is price, this can be in form of money or bartering.

And no, the process of creating good is not value, because frankly nobody gives a shit about a painting you draw for 100 hours, people give a shit about painting that looks good to their eyes.

read debt: the first 5000 years

Would you mind talking in a more clear manner? When you say:
What type of value do you mean? Use value?

Reason?

The value in their eyes, dum dum.

Something seems valuable to someone, it doesn't seem valuable to someone else, that's value, a subjective thing.

Because barter is a meme. Smith's imaginary barter village where money has to be invented doesn't exist.
Debt predates money, and money predates barter. Markets and state aren't in conflict, they actually come into existence together: the state creates the market. The whole libertarian worldview rests on ahistorical bullshit.

Predicting the market price of art is a headache for economists of any stripe. It's a headache for people who do nothing but dealing with art. Anyway, do you believe a relevant fraction of money a person spends on average goes to buying fancy painted pictures? And if you don't, what's the point of bringing that up? I ask you to clarify your stance on what constitutes price formation for mass-produced consumer goods in the industrialized society we live in.

How the fuck is bartering a meme?

You mean an idea where it's shared between people? I guess it's a meme then.

But bartering absolutely exists, and it was a substitute form of currency for quite sometimes.

Because we don't predict, we just base on what people want.

You want this picture, I sell to you this picture a high price, never mind that I buy this picture from a shitty half-starved painer.

As the consumer deems them. If they think this good is worth this price, it's their right to be an idiot/or a genius.

Price fixing is a sham.

...

OK, dude, how do you think the world work when money wasn't issued everywhere?

But that's wrong. If a thing is offered for five dollars and I am very happy with that as I would even pay 20 dollars for it if I had to, I just pay five.

(not the guy you were talking to)

It's worth noting that Marx's theory will only apply to reproducible commodities which can be exchanged in varying quantity; a single painting is not that.

The economy does not consist entirely of one-off transactions at random prices; if you look at the long run of a market's exchanges, you will see that prices tend toward single points, varying by supply and demand, around a point which was determined, Marx claims, by the amount of abstract social labour inside it.

page 43
outside of primitive socialist communities (which has existed for tens of thousands of years), mostly debt was used, money was rare, barter only occurs between people who are used to money and don't have any at hand, like in modern day prisons

You have every right to be a fucking idiot, but the price stays at $5, you overpay it.

You know, sometimes I wonder: Has there ever been a person who didn't believe in the labor theory of value?

No matter how strongly some people claim to not believe it, you talk with them a bit and listen to them talk about the economy, and no matter how much they push it away at first, it always creeps back into their reasoning. I mean, who doesn't ever complain about something being rip-off? And then, think about how it comes that they believe something is a rip-off.

Well, fuck Marx's theory then because supply and demand works for everything.

So basically barter exists for thousands of years before currency was invented and issued en masse.

Nice job genius.

When money is a thing, who gives a shit about barter anymore?

I don't because it doesn't fucking work.

People call thing rip-off because they do not think this good is worth that price.

But no one complains when someone buys something cheap.

Well, genius, what is the usual behavior. It's that people don't pay more than they have to. Whether the thing makes them mildly happy or very happy. The question is then: How come the price is at five?

The production cost of A is 100$. The production cost of B is 200$. The supply of A and B are both at 100. What is the price of A and B?

Because the seller thinks he can sell the goods if the price is $5?

As the consumer deems it.

If the consumer like A better, A would come as a higher price.

Why? Because the demand of A is higher.

You're confused when you are treating the law of supply and demand as an alternative or better theory of value. Supply and demand does not explain the point about which the price fluctuates, it merely explains the fluctuations themselves. However various useful results fall from the LTV, for example if someone has to sell their commodities below their value, it's an incentive to make production better, or to stop and produce other commodities.

Read page 12 and 13 of this: ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/ecn265/value.pdf

nigga no. Just because I say your house is $1, it doesn't mean you're going to give me it for $1. And even if you did, it wouldn't explain the fact that everyone else is selling their house for much larger prices in the long run of the economy.

So people call a thing a rip-off because… they think it is a rip-off. Great explanation.

Christ, learn to read. For the longest time, societies have either worked mainly with debt instead of currency, or primitive socialism.

Barter is inconvenient as fuck and has never been used much, you know the good old 'berries and shoes' story, right?

So A could be sold at 110$ and B at 100$?

Supply and demand explains price, it explains production, it explains everything when it comes to goods.

While we are busy debating this LTV bullshit, the average farmer already knows and abuses supply and demand.

Well, if that's the only customer, then yes, I would. You can sell a house in a desert for free and nobody would buy it.
It perfectly explains it, there's a huge demand for houses IN SPECIFIC place, that's why they are jacked up in prices.

Christ, read your own shit, so barter is used for thousands of years, but it's never been used much.

Get better history.

No, tell me.

A could be sold for $1000 and B could be sold for free if everybody wants A and nobody wants B.

Yes, and how much he can sell it for, if it is an essential thing for living like food, surely this has a lot to do with how much competition there is. We are not talking about sentimental people here, but somebody who tries to get maximum profit.

Exactly, it's a great explaination, especially the "they think" part.

The LTV doesn't matter since nobody gives a shit that you spend 100 hours to make something.

So…supply and demand again?

What's your point?

It has to do if the consumer wants this shit or not, this works for both essential things and non-essential things.

No, barter hasn't been used. When did I, or Graeber said so? He adresses the myth of barter.

'Berries and shoes' and other variants are a common economic myth, of how people actually used to barter like this and this led to many problems, like how berries are perishable, the person with shoes might not want berries, so they might need a third person to barter with to satisfy their needs etc.
This fictional situation is used to explain the rise of currency as we know it, ASSUMING that barter actually existed

Wouldn't that just mean that supply of A would rise next production cycle, and supply of B would lower next production cycle? How what that impact the price?

Well, I just barter with my colleague, I give him a pen and he gives me a pencil.

Apparently, barter doesn't exist.

Holy shit, fucking economy expert around here.

...

It means A is made more, until nobody wants A anymore, and they move to the next thing they want.

You are seriously confused about the theory. It's true that nobody gives a shit, but for the theory to hold, they don't have to give a shit. If a seller is constantly having to sell at less than the value, he'll stop producing those items. He'll do something else. It is the producer (in your case, the supplier) who controls the production. He will care about value (expressed in prices).

can't tell if you're trolling or not
history does not attempt to explain your fucking pen and pencil microeconomic exchange.

Well, it kinda does.

It even explains why capitalists are willing to fucking destroy goods instead of giving them away for free.

Barter has never been the predominant mode of exchange though, it really doesn't fucking matter if you and your friend barter shit or a few people in ancient history would do so as other forms of exchange were dominant. Barter has existed, but a barter-based society or economy? Nope.

Similarly, just because you can live in a commune doesn't mean global capitalism keeps living on.

I think different people ITT don't mean exactly the same thing by barter here. Those who deny barter playing a big role in ancient times probably mean the simultaneous type, which is introduced in econ101, with the prof then concluding: Gee, if A has what B wants and B has what C wants and… Z has what A wants, wouldn't money be an efficient way of doing that? What was rather the case were complicated debt relations, with Graeber claiming that those debt concepts are much older than cash usage.

This seller is the one who buys shit from the producer, so the producer is the seller to him. If the goods aren't goods to the sellers, of course the seller isn't buying from him.

No seller gives a shit about production as long as he gets the goods cheaply.

made a mistake and fixed it

Thanks for wording it better than I could.

Well, that certain history can suck a dick because my history of capitalism does attempt to explain that clearly.

It has been used for thousands of years history before money exists but it has never been the predominant mode of exchange.

Go fuck a goat.

Sure, nobody gives a shit if that thing is usually made in 1 hour. But if a mass-produced thing is usually made in 100 hours, what then?

What then?

People will buy them if they want then.

And worse, people will pay more for things that are made in 1 hour.

I don't know what you're trying to say anymore. Read the fucking pdf I linked. The 'barter -> currency -> debt' history of economics is a myth, it's the other way around.

Well, prove it's a fucking myth then.

And nowadays people still fucking barter, as seen in tribal societies.

Prove it's true, motherfucker. Show me Adam Smith's mythical pre-currency village of the baker, the brewer and the butcher bartering.

The tribal society that exists right now.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AK-47

The point is not about whether barter ever happened, the point is about what the typical economic relations were. Graeber is a fucking anarchist, but the point he makes as an anthropologist is utterly banal to other anthropologists, be they conservative or whatever; and the same point is fucking heresy to economists, who for most part don't know shit about history, they just repeat a made-up story by Adam Smith about the convenience of money in a non-society of atomized bartering people who are all specialized in their jobs, so they can't live on their own producing for themselves, and who have no mutual obligations whatsoever. And then, money comes from heaven as a convenient thing, somehow. Not even a state is mentioned. How would the bartering specialists who are strangers to each others even survive for a month, pre-money? The story is total nonsense.

Money comes about when someone decides that bartering is too much trouble for their worth.

But money too was invented.

For thousands of years before money exists, bartering was what used between societies and individuals to trade for things they want.

Be it rice, wood, or precious gem.

And, can what you describe be a stable state of affairs? Day in, day out, people pay more for a mass-produced thing that takes one hour to make than they pay for a thing that takes 100 hours? How so? Unless patents or other monopolistic shit is involved, that doesn't really make sense.

wtf i hate socialism now

It's definitely a stable state of affairs since it's been going ever since money was fucking invented.

It makes perfect sense, people don't buy shit they don't want.

Unless somehow you want people to have an objective value meter where things always cost X or Y because said person spent Z times doing it.

Not getting food is a matter of life and death. I pay money for food and I pay money for much less serious things than food. There have been months in my life when I paid more for less important things than food. Why? Did I judge those things as more important than MUFUGGEN FOOD? No, it's just that I got away with paying less.

The price you have to pay is driven down by competition. For some things, the price may even fall below reproduction cost, temporarily. But if the things are regularly produced on a mass scale, in a competitive environment, there is a limit to how low prices can get. And, again assuming a competitive environment where it is easy for investors to switch from on non-profitable sector into a more profitable one, low barriers to entry, isn't there also a limit then to how high prices can get, usually, and aren't these prices strongly influenced by the physical requirements of production?

There isn't actually a limit to how prices can get.

In fact, capitalists destroy supplies in order to keep prices from being lowered.

That's EXACTLY what Graeber says, that barter only arises among people who are used to currency. If people are bartering assault rifles, it's not a pre-currency society, nimrod.

What if I told you that once upon a time, there was a violent regime that forced peasants to give stuff to the regime, and tortured and murdered those who refused, and that after a while that violent regime put tokens into circulation, vouchers you could give to the violent regime instead of stuff, and that this is the usual origin of currency.

It's absolutely a society that doesn't use currency as it main method of living.

Tribal people do not actually give a shit at currency, this is what they fail to see values in diamond until actual currency users come in.

Or what if I told you that a bunch of merchants start to decide one day that this piece of coin means a single unit of price, and money was invented?

...

wat

It makes perfect sense though.

It's about what people want, not how many hours you put into it.

LTV is supposed to explain the capitalist mode of production. Which means that it doesn't account for objects which may be found in nature without any need for labour. This means that finding a diamond without actually trying to consistently find diamonds for the sake of capital expansion, can not be defined by the LTV. So that is a bogus counter argument and falls outside what Marx was even trying to define in the first place. Therefore for it to to be defined by the LTV it requires the items examined to be: Items able to be mass produced by workers under regular conditions. The items must be able to be sold on the free-market, where they are subject to buyers. This would include all items created in factories and on farms. This means that there is a number of commodities which can't be defined by the LTV. Yet, this still explains the vast majority of commodities produced under the capitalist mode of production. Including food, housing, clothing, cars, electronics, and most luxury items.

Supply and demand still exist in the LTV. They are the market forces which regulate prices. These are however secondary to the socially necessary labour time. Supply and demand can explain why certain items become cheaper relative to the starting price, however, rarely explain what the starting price is. Supply and demand don't explain why certain items are more expensive than others when the demand and supply of both items are the same. Marx explains that commodities which fall under the definition mention earlier, acquire all their value from labour. This is because the items transformed in the labour process were originally procured by labour. The machines used by the workers are created by labour, the iron ingots used to make the machines are created by labour, the iron ore used to create the iron ingots is created by labour, and finally, the iron ore is extracted and transported by labour. The rarity/scarcity of the metal only means that the labour required to mine an equal amount of metal ore (consistently) is higher, therefore their value becomes higher.

Using bread as an example. Bread is created in multiple bread factories owned by different capitalists. It is sold at 2$ per loaf. If supply goes down, the price goes up because of scarcity. However, capitalists will just create more bread next production cycle (if this isn't possible it breaks the definition because it can't be mass produced) and prices go back to 2$. If supply goes up the price goes down because no one buys it. Except it only means that the capitalists will make less next cycle and prices again go back to 2$. Supply and demand don't explain why it was 2$ to begin with. Socially necessary labour time explains why it is 2$. It requires a certain time to create the bread. This is the labour time. The price of input (wheat, water, salt, and so on) is as mentioned also decided by labour time. This labour time is bought on the labour market in the form of workers. They have a certain working capacity, which can't be increased. They need sleep and food. They also need a minimum wage to rent an apartment and buy food and clothes. The factors of worker productivity and price of means of subsistence, therefore, decide the value of a commodity. The means of subsistence is also created by labour and follows the same principle.

Err, isn't that about a black market? I thought the LTV was about the model free market (no barriers to entry). Aside from that, even as a real-world approximation of prices the LTV can be used for black markets as well, by pricing in the risk. That is, you don't think about a single unit of an illegal thing, but many units and how many are seized on average etc.

Supply and demand perfectly explains why a bread is $2 though.

People are willing to buy bread at that price, ergo it's that.

If people aren't willing to buy breads at $2, it will become $1, no matter the production cost.

Seems like there is a lot of
in this thread, so I'm going to try and clarify something for you.

The key concept is that 'labour' refers to TWO DIFFERENT THINGS. Firstly there is the time the worker is hired for. You can call this 'labour power' or 'labour time'. Secondly, there is the actual work done or value added by the worker. This is the 'labour input.

Quantifying the labour input is impossible, because you can't buy it directly. All you can do is buy the worker's time, or a finished product. By hiring a worker, the capitalist is buying his time in the hopes that through non-market coercion in the workplace, he will be able to produce a product of greater value than his labour time.

If the capitalist is able to extract more *useful* work from the worker than the labour time plus fixed costs are worth, he makes a profit. If he can't extract enough useful work, he makes a loss.

Regardless of whether you can define the value of the products produced by socially necessary labour time (which is really just a fancy way of relying on market competition to set values anyway), the key takeaway from marx is that workers do not sell their labour input, they sell their time, and the extraction of their labour is not a market relation.

If they could, capitalists would turn it into a market relation by simply buying finished goods, but by definition any production that requires a firm must require coordination that cannot happen in the marketplace.

So LTV only works on certain market.

Okay, supply and demand works for ALL markets, government-owned ones, mixed market, free market and black market.

Supply and demand perfectly explains black market too.

Mate, we aren't talking anymore about many hours going into a shitty picture. We are talking about mass-produced items, low barriers to entry, and we are NOT talking about short-term fluctuations.

I will try to make it clear for you.

Nobody gives a shit about labour times.

They want the goods done, as fast as possible, without killing the workers.

Mass-produced items, high pieces of art, a piece of garbages.

Nobody gives a shit about your good if nobody wants them.

And stop fucking applying LTV to a certain kind of good, that fucking explains why it's so flawed when supply and demand explain fucking everything.

So if you had to choose between hiring two workers, one of which will work for $20 an hour, and one of which will work for $8 an hour, you wouldn't care how much their hourly wage was?

Of course I care, because why hire the expensive worker when I can hire the lesser price worker?

Of course, experiences also come into being, if the $20 priced worker can get job done faster, it makes more sense to hire the former.

No it won't, I already explained this. If people only pay 1$ for a loaf of bread which has 2$ worth of labour, the factories have to close down, because they can't pay for the manufacturing costs. Which means no one will make bread. Marx then explains that bread wasn't a necessary commodity in our society because no one was willing to pay what it was worth. Supply and demand only regulate the amount produced. With cheaper prices represented in special sales being only being held by stores which sell the commodities and not by the factories which created them.

Are you serious now?

If people only pay for $1 for bread, that means the factory can that make $2 breads will close down, but the factories that make $1 breads will remain.

Are you trying to fucking imply all factories must make breads at $2 or perish?

Marx is fucking wrong.

In other words, you care about how much value the worker can add in your firm once he is brought up to speed, relative to the wage.

If you can get a higher value added : wage ratio you'd take it, right?

All I care is about his price and the price of my product.

This is the power supply and demand

That poster assumed that bread had a production cost of 2 dollarydoos.
no fucking shit

His price is given in dollars per hour, so why aren't you concerned about labour time again?

wow, who thought?

But there is no price fixing in the real world.

There is no $2 bread, only breads that costs $2.

Wait, hold up, I'm concerned about the money I pay him, not his labour time?

he can work for me for free, and I wouldn't give a shit about how much he puts his time for me.

A car would be destroyed before it's sold for $1.

Why? Because capitalists know supply and demand.

But it absolutely can, that's how good factories stay afloat, they control the prices of in and out.

You care about how much each hour of labour time costs, that's what I meant.

You need to estimate how much the worker can do for the company and compare it to the wage you pay him. If you think the worker will be less useful, the wage you are willing to pay goes down.

Yeah, I do, out of monetary interest.

Right. Now, lets say you hire your workers and buy the plant and machinery. How do you make sure they do useful work instead of making mudpies with the machine tools?

Observe the ones that actually do their job, and fire the ones that don't?

Another commodity, in this case currency.

Exactly. And if they suddenly work slower or taking excessive bathroom breaks, if they start using the internet for hours of facebook?

In a large firm you're gonna need some enforcers, people you can delegate the management to, right?

Indeed, especially in large firm.

And lets say you've got a major contract to fill, and the company absolutely needs it to avoid bankruptcy.

With everyone knowing that their jobs on the line, you could get them to work twice as hard, I bet.

Of course, I will.

After all, labour isn't what matters, what matters is getting my shit out on time, so I can get money, money so I can buy some new shoes and pay for the damn workers.

Its pretty good business to be able to get that much out of your workers though. You'll be able to sell your goods for cheaper, get more market share if they are worried about losing their jobs.

Point is, their wage isn't really connected with how much you can get out of them, if you're a good enough entrepreneur. A good businessman can get a lot out of a worker. A bad one will go bankrupt.

And that is the difference between labour inputs and labour time.

Another thing to note, its very hard, maybe impossible to tell with a large integrated business what value a single worker is adding. You have to look at everyone organized together and see what they can do as a team.

There is overhead. Labor is a significant portion of overhead. If you cannot afford to make your product, it no longer matters what you sell it for.

what. This is what credit is for.

If you sell it at a profit you can borrow money to cover the costs of fixed capital, effectively amortizing the cost over future revenue.

If denial of the labor theory of value requires that you defend a particular position and it's self-evident that this particular position is absurd, maybe you shouldn't deny the labor theory of value then? Just a thought.

...

You don't need a bullshit economic theory to point out that capitalists profit off of workers, you stupid fucking nigger.

What is the difference between value, exchange value, use value, and price? Like, what units are they in?

Value is the mean quantity of labor time necessary for a given society with its mode of production to produce a certain commodity. It is an abstraction of an objective, but fluid, quantifiable value.

Exchange value is a subjective and reflective quality. It is what one commodity can be exchanged for expressed in terms of another commodity. A given amount of Commodity A (eg. one pound of gold) can be exchanged for another quantity of Commodity B (eg. a cut diamond). Exchange value fluctuates constantly.

Use-value is a useful quality of a given commodity that is subjective to a particular individual. Unlike the others, it is not quantifiable. For example, ten yards of linen is a use-value to a tailor, but it is not a use-value to baker.

Price is just the amount of currency that an individual person is willing to accept for a particular commodity.

so exchange value is basically price (you can express exchange value in terms of currency and thus calculate the exchange value of any good in terms of any other)

why does the exchange value-price distinction exist?

is use-value basically equivalent to utility? it doesn't make sense to say that a use-value is an object and not a number (even if we don't know the number)

With that said, this makes the standard criticism of Marx's LTV seem trivial. Economists argue that the labor theory of value doesn't accurately describe prices and is a bad theory, but Marx just defines value to be labor time and uses the word in a different sense.

We are witnessing the birth of a new school of economic thought here. Nobody except this one guy in this thread here has ever claimed that the level of competition has no effect whatsoever on price!

I might misremember, but as far as I know the distinction is because of inflation and deflation of money. If the market value of something is stable in the sense that you can get the same stuff for it, if you don't sit on the money for long and instantly get another good, then its exchange value is stable, whether there is inflation or deflation or neither.

Many will answer yes to that, but I think the way classical economists talk about it is quite different from modern utility in that they usually treat it as something fricking obvious, obvious to most people in society, and they list different qualities and don't do calculations with that. It's a bit tricky in that one might think then of use value as inherent to the physical thing. For the most part, this fits how classical economists talk about it. But Marx gives the example of magnets and society figuring out what you can use them for, so even though physically a thing doesn't change, if people figure out new uses, the use value changes. Yet this is still different from how modern economists talk about utility in that this process of figuring out, with magnets at least, is a collective process. At a given time and place, people are roughly on the same page in knowing what the use value of a thing is. Modern writers' utility descriptions make a big deal of people having strongly different subjective experiences, opinions, interests.

How can anyone be so utterly, irreparably retarded?