There is a Wikipedia page for the Labor Theory of Value.
There is a Wikipedia page for the Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value.
But there is no Wikipedia page for “Criticisms of the Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value”. Even Google doesn’t turn anything up.
I have not read enough theory to even fully understand LTV, let alone understand its criticisms. But I’m assuming there are some Marxists who have written the “Criticisms of the Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value”. What would these be? Right now you get the impression that the “Criticisms of the Labor Theory of Value” are going unchallenged.
I only skimmed one part, the ‘Socially Necessary Labor’-segment, and… at least the first criticism read like a (willful, perhaps) misunderstanding of the concept as Marx described it. The second is about practical implementation, and how that was basically impossible in the soviet union and the last is about how it’s hard to measure (duh, it’s a theoretical concept for the most part; mostly useful in the conception of further theory).
If the other criticisms follow a similar line, they’ll take one micro-aspect of Marxist theory and then lament how that aspect, in isolation, isn’t getting you anywhere.
In my experience, a lot of criticisms rely on the assumption that value and price are the same thing, whereas every Marxist knows that price is exchange value.
What do you think about the Ecological Economics or the Post-Keynesian argument?
The Post-Keynesian arguments are the same dreck as earlier Keynesians, namely that the market allocates resources based on “marginal utility” or “preference”. These people live in a fantasy land where the market magically determines the value of all products, sets the price accordingly, and there’s an omnipotent force (the State/central bank) who is supposed to step in if Mr. Market isn’t doing his self-care and keeping up with therapy.
As TankieTanuki said, these criticisms ultimately get back to the idea that price is value, which is something that Marxists fundamentally disagree with (fwiw, stock market gurus like Warren Buffett are on the same side as Marx, “value investing” requires price/value mismatches on a fundamental level!).
The ecological economics theory from Wiki sounds like some ecofash b.s. on first read. “Labor doesn’t create value because labor takes energy to produce” - no shit, that’s the “v” part of the “c+v+s”. “Cultural differences can change the use-value of goods” - yes to some extent, but this sounds an awful lot like “those primitive people don’t value those resources”.
Understandable, if they did that they would have to have a criticisms of the criticisms of the criticisms of the labour theory of value page.
Because they didn’t read Marx for basic comprehension. That is always the answer. Instead, the critics seem to just copy and cite each others’ misapprehensions.
The most common criticism is to declare a dichotomy between LTV and marginalism, which to me implies that they don’t really understand either of them because they’re confusing pricing with the Marxist concept of the aggregate value of commodities. Anyone who read Capital while conscious will know how ridiculous this is, given that Marx explicitly differentiated this from exchange value.
