Like many of my fellow hexbearians, I like to punish myself with the cognitohazard that is reddit. Today, I encountered this post, on a joke explanation subreddit, and it was accompanied by a particularly stupid series of comments from an r/neoliberal poster (who also had an AI Ghibli profile picture, truly a potent combo) claiming that Marx's LTV "falls apart under scrutiny" among other things. Essentially, the discussion seemed to center around the idea that, because a top OnlyFans earner makes so much more than the median, labor cant possibly explain the value they are creating, since the labor they are doing should be fairly similar.
I thought it would be a fun exercise in deepening my understanding of LTV to try and formulate arguments against this, and hopefully you feel inclined to add your own thoughts down below!
The first claim the neolib makes is that marx thought all labor was equal between individuals (lmao no he didnt) but hes rather swiftly shut down by someone bringing up Socially Necessary Labor Time. In an attempt to save himself from this obvious hole in his critique, he says a few things.
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He claims that marx's idea of Socially Necessary Labor Time, particularly the idea of the average productivity that a given laborer would be compared to, has a low standard deviation. I'm not sure if this is my ignorance on the subject or if hes pulling this out of his ass, but did Marx really imply this anywhere? He is obviously trying to imply that the difference between a top and median onlyfans earner is a massive deviation, and therefore Marx was wrong, but did Marx ever actually make a claim like this?
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He claims that Socially Necessary Labor Time does not have a rigorous mathematical definition because Marx was too bad at math to give it one. While I agree that what is "Socially Necessary" is up for some amount of debate, I feel like this is again a stupid thing to say when he is referencing the average. What rigorous mathematical definition is required to figure out an average? It really feels like hes trying to appeal to the complexity of modern western economics and their obtuse formulas (which ironically seem to have far less predictive power about reality than anything Marx ever said) when there is nothing particularly mathematically complicated about calculating this average, whats prohibitive is the collection of the data. Its a bit like saying it would be hard to figure out, with perfect accuracy, the average age of all humans on Earth. The math isnt whats hard, its finding every single persons age that is tedious.
The delusional ramblings of a neoliberal aside, I think there are some important factors missing from the discussion. For one, I would inquire how a neoliberal would seek to explain this phenomenon; could you really confidently say "This top earner is actually 10,000 times more attractive than the median one. If they are a 10, then the median earner must necessarily be a .001"? It seems a bit ridiculous to suggest that the attractiveness differential between any two individuals could be that high. But more importantly, I think theres a lot of "invisible" labor that is being ignored in order for the neoliberal to make his argument. Its easy to say "Top earner shoved this up their butt, median earner shoved this up their butt, they are doing the same labor", but anyone who is familiar with these types of services knows that its actually usually people that were already famous that have the largest platform. Basically, all the labor they did to amass that following is being ignored so that they can be equated. That doesnt even begin to mention the other labor that could potentially be separating these individuals; if the commodity you are selling is your body, what about all the labor that goes into its maintenance? All the dieting, working out, cosmetic surgery, etc that a top earner has both the means and the impetus to work towards, is not being factored into this labor comparison. All the constant capital in the form of high quality cameras, rented hotel rooms, ring lights, is again ignored when comparing profitability.
Finally, I remember marx saying something about nature being just as much a source of wealth as labor (I think its something particularly about use-value but thats where my understanding gets murky, would love to have that clarified), and in this case obviously if you are just born with massive honkers that is going to convey a definite advantage to you in your onlyfans career over someone born with neurofibromatosis.
I know this is probably the most ridiculous thing any of us could spend our intellectual energy on but I refuse to cede any ground to some dork neoliberal and was frustrated by my own inability to formulate a counter-argument, so I came here hoping the great minds of hexbear could dish out some wisdom on the subject. Heres the link to the comment thread if you want to see what the lib said for yourself: https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1kb4t77/comment/mpruwa4/
Let me put the tinfoil hat on for a second and say, I have noticed this as well and I'm 99% sure its Black Propaganda (if im using that phrase correctly).
Someone else in the thread correctly points out that there are lots of uncritical "multipolarity enthusiasts" all over the internet, but personally I think that can only explain who is liking and sharing the videos. The real question at hand: who is making these posts in the first place?
The only satisfying answer ive come to is that its something resembling black propaganda. Although, instead of the idea being that the propaganda is abhorrent and turns the viewer away from being pro-China or pro-Traore with its ugly content, I think the idea is instead for the aforementioned enthusiastic multipolarity enjoyers to love the video, share it, and then get smacked down by an enlightened lib going "umm, thats actually fake". We all understand that ideology is a bit like dominos; confidently sharing something that subsequently gets disproven doesnt just make you question that specific fact, it makes you question the ENTIRE ideological framework that led you to believe in that thing in the first place. The goal is to make these people go "Huh maybe the libs are right and everything good about china is a lie and they are an authoritarian hellhole". That fake China airdrop video was literally everywhere, even Gustavo Petro (the fucking president of columbia) was reposting it uncritically on his twitter. His post is a good example of the phenomenon im talking about. He attached a commentary to it that said something like (some countries help (China) other countries create misery (US/Israel)). This is a powerful message, one that should be a thorn in the side for libs and zionists, and yet the entire thing is disarmed because the comments can just go "Umm, actually, that videos fake" and ignore the message entirely. Its not like we need to invent examples of China being more helpful to Gaza than the fucking USA, who are the perpetrators of the genocide in the first place. Any actual comrade would never dream of mislabeling a video of previous US aid, because the Chinese DO give aid (on the ground), so you could just find an article talking about that and use it as your evidence. The only person who has a vested interest in lying about this is someone who wants to HARM the reputation of the Chinese with respect to Gaza, not help it. Thats my two cents.