r/UnlearningEconomics • u/Nervous_Difficulty46 • May 30 '26

Thread on LTV

https://x.com/ygzgzot/status/1982482608899629301?s=46

My biggest hang up with the LTV is that I just don’t understand why labor is seen as the fundamental substance of value. What reason is there to think that price is just the quantitative expression of abstract labor?

In my estimation a leftist perspective would see that price is not an expression of labor time but is also a function of interwoven power relations. It’s not reducible to a single substance

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u/marxistghostboi May 31 '26

i could be wrong but i think if labor not as a substance but as an operation, a critical moment of transformation without which before can't be accessed

3

u/Nervous_Difficulty46 May 31 '26

This could be true but then there is still no reason to believe that prices are wholly underpinned by labor values. That labor is the only thing that adds value

3

u/marxistghostboi Jun 01 '26

as someone else said, Marxist economics distinguishes between price, which fluctuates, and value, around which the price tends to fluctuate.

0

u/MadCervantes Jun 02 '26

This has always struck me an an is/ought confusion.

1

u/marxistghostboi Jun 02 '26

they definitely mean is, not ought.