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Is the Labor Theory of Value junk? (hexbear.net)

submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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There’s this new video by a good YouTuber - Value by Unlearning Economics. There was also an article by Ben Burgis for the Jacobin which argued the same.

Is it possible, as both these people argue, to separate Marx’s critique of capitalism from his theory of value? To keep the former and discard the latter?

Edit - I’m not siding with the video or with Burgis, btw. I think Marx’s value theory is correct. I’m just looking for people who can shine some light on this new(?) phenomena of leftists speaking out against LTV while trying “save” Marx’s critique of capital. To me, that just seems like a pointless and hopeless endeavour.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

LTV is already empirically proven and Burgis is a hack. There's no reason to make such a concession. It's like "Marxists" who still concede to the Mises' and Hayek's economic calculation problem even though it has been technologically solvable for about 50 years now.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Do you know where I could find reputations of the economic calculation problem?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Walmart

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

wdym?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The idea that an economy can't be centrally planned because it's too computationally difficult, or really any other objection, is disproved by the monopolization of retail, logistics and production Walmart achieved reaching the scale of a nation state. They became the sole provider of goods in swaths of the US. At this point, to do communism you'd basically just have to take over Walmart.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

"Vertically integrated" is just the politically correct term for "centrally planned"