Message from @Queef Madagascar
Discord ID: 418205003170316288
for example the idea of surplus value and the whole labor theory of value is, on a logical basis in the modern world, pretty nonsensical
value is subjective
perhaps it would have been better suited for back then, before the industrial revolution
before mass-production was a thing
it wasnt coined by marx, smith and ricardo used before the neoclassicals stopped using it
this was 100 years before
well it's true
even mainstream economists at the time didnt use it
Actually, it isn't. The Neo-Marxians made it pretty clear that the LTV is, in fact, a thing. And much of the criticism directed at it is based on misreadings and assumptions.
lol what
the neo marxists like in uni dont even claim it
The LTV has been elaborated on and tweaked by numerous economists since it's formulation.
Not accepting it is pretty stupid tbh.
It's supported by the math.
the only arguments for it are on a morality basis and not a logical basis
which in essence really isn't an argument now is it
According to Marx’s argument, we must totally abstract from a commodity’s “use value” to determine the ultimate thing that underlies the equality of exchange and what ultimately determines exchange value.
However, that is blatantly and disastrously contradicted later in the same Chapter when Marx makes this admission:
“Lastly, nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value.” (Marx 1906: 48).
This is exactly like having your cake and eating it too.
On the one hand, we can totally ignore use value in ultimately explaining exchange values, but on the other hand – only a few pages later – nothing without utility (by which Marx no doubt means “use value”) can create value and by implication price. This is a bad contradiction, and requires that being an object of utility is a necessary condition not only for having labour value but also an exchange value.
Morality has nothing to do with it. It's mathematics.
no its not
the mathematics are there to justify the morals of the argument
Do you want me to hit you with some equations?
the cb can just make mopney
you justify morals through any means
why does the money have value
mathematics is one of them
you can create all these equations to prove something you think is moral
I'm not justifying any moral stance here lol.
Morality is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned.
how else do you justify this then
on what basis
For Marx, fiat is not and never was money. It is a token of money. This is critical, because Marx never argues in Capital that fiat currency had to be a commodity; he said money had to be a commodity. Marx insisted fiat was only a token of money, a placeholder (if you will) for money itself in circulation. While a token of money is not money, commodity money could itself enter circulation and function as a token of itself. Money could directly fill the function of currency in its own bodily form, but a mere paper token, like fiat currency, could never be money.
This approach, I argue, allows us to broaden the discussion beyond simply asking the question, “Does money have to be a commodity”. Having established that a token currency did not have to be money, i.e., a commodity, we can now ask a more important question: How did a mere token of money take on a life of its own and begin to function as if it is money in place of a money commodity?
i get the whole thing, the workers create something worth 10 dollars, they get 2 dollars in return
i get it
There is in fact no place in the law of value as proposed by Marx where he ever states currency had to be pegged to a commodity money. What he actually states is this: If the currency is not pegged to a definite quantity of commodity money, there would be no price standard.
but its not pegged
money is not a commodity its a means of exchsnge
a numeraire
As many people know in Marx’s ‘transformation problem’, prices of production do not seem to be consistent with the prices of the same commodities based on their labor values. The labor value price of any commodity is v; while its capitalistic production price is v+s. Do the math: v = v+s, only when s = 0 or v = 0. When s = 0, v = v+0 = v. And, since labor power is the only source of surplus value, when v = 0, s must be 0 by definition, because if no living human labor is employed in the production process, no surplus value can be produced.
The so-called transformation problem states that prices in the capitalistic mode of production contains a contradiction that cannot be resolved. To overcome this contradiction, you have to suppress the values of commodities within circulation and this is just what debased fiat does.