As I understand it the LTV says that the price of goods in an equilibrium market economy will be based on the socially necessary labor that goes into producing that good. To me that sounds like (eventually) in a market economy people will be paid in accordance with the work that they do. I understand this may come off as concern trolling but I hear Marxists bring up the LTV a lot and I don't understand how this supports a Marxist worldview.
Labor Theory of Value
Elijah Phillips
Ian Davis
Workers can't be payed in accordance with their actual labor, otherwise there would be no profit to be made. The difference between the exchange value of a commodity and the wage given to the producer is the surplus created by labor, which is expropiated by the capitalist as surplus value or net profit.
Tyler Rivera
You're conflating price with value, which Marxists look at as different things.
Aaron Rivera
I guess I don't get why labor isn't considered a product in this system and why laborers wouldn't eventually be paid the correct amount. My impression from working is that working for someone else (the capitalist) is usually really dumb, but also that some people just aren't all that bright and do actually benefit from being given directions by the capitalist. To be fair I'm not really talking about trust fund babies here, more the people who became millionaires by being psychos and working nonstop.
Bentley Phillips
I hear this a lot too. I get the more general idea that obviously the value of a good could be different from the current price of a good but how would a Marxist determine value?
Nicholas Cox
But the system is designed so that you need capital to start a business, most worker will never have this, by design most people must be workers or it collapses, so how can workers be consigned as dumb?
Ayden Richardson
Capital is pretty cheap right now. I think the thing a worker would be lacking is free time more than money. How would this be achieved though? I think it would be more manageable than a complete overhaul of the ecoomy.
Gavin Nelson
Just because someone might benefit from leadership doesn't mean they need a capitalist to tell them what to do. It's not like most leftists are advocating for leaderless organizations. Take that up with the anarchists. The democratic model can easily account for the need for leaders without the need for a capitalist to be the one in charge.
Juan Sullivan
I don't want to staw-man you here but I've been in small democratic organizations and they are absolute shitshows. Half the people don't know who they are going to vote for until the last minute and the need for validation and peoples unwillingness to repeatedly hurt others feelings causes an explosion of useless positions. How many elections would you expect the average person to be involved in?
Cooper Reed
This is the stereotypical view the upper class want's you to have. Of them being some inhuman superworker, that's not true.
Anyhow even if this is true for most millionaires, millionaires are not the bourgeoisie, the real owners of production. We are talking multi millionaires and their wealth is built on the exploitation of others, that's how the system works. And it does not matter if they get replace every so often by other millionaires, their wealth and power remains concentrated.
Not really, considering all the people in debt, and absolutely not real in the third world.
Either way, communism is not about giving people oportunities to get rich.
Democratic general elections are not the only alternative for the socialist workplace. There are many ways to run a worker owned businesses with many examples of sucessfull coops existing today.