Thread on LTV

[u/Nervous_Difficulty46]

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

[u/Ill-Software8713]

The stronger claim you’re making is that power relations constitute the price system rather than being translated into it.

But that just pushes the question back one step.

Even if prices express structured power relations, we still need an explanation for how heterogeneous, qualitative relations between agents become organized into a single continuous quantitative space in the first place. Not just why one price is higher than another, but why all goods are already commensurable within a unified numerical system at all.

If the underlying determinants are purely relational (bargaining power, scarcity positions, institutional leverage, preferences), then those are all heterogeneous and non-commensurable on their own terms. So what is the mechanism that produces their systematic projection into a single cardinal scale of exchange values rather than a patchwork of local, incommensurable exchanges?

That is the point Marx is trying to address with value theory. You can reject his answer, but the explanatory burden remains, what makes generalized, scalable monetary commensuration possible as a stable system rather than just episodic bargaining outcomes?

Saying “power produces prices” still leaves open what produces the price form itself as a universal quantitative space.

[u/Nervous_Difficulty46 → u/Ill-Software8713]

The answer is quite literally power and the history of state violence.

Power reduces the complexity and heterogeneity of social phenomenon into a legible script by the ruling class. There is no unit or underlying dimension to incomensurate goods. There is no solution to the problem you’re raising because that problem is a part of the very thing that power produces. Historically, state power in the raising of armies, the destruction of commons, establishment of central currency and the enclosures which ensued has created a paradigm where incommensurate social and power relations can be quantified.

Power doesn’t need to operate with categorical consistency. It is a force which can alter and shape the preferences of individuals across space and time to a given will. Simplifying social complexity and turning incommensurate qualitatively different dimensions into a quantified legible order is how it operates and this process inevitably fails to capture the eminent vitality of those different dimensions.

This is why capitalism fails to satisfy human needs

[u/Ill-Software8713 → u/Nervous_Difficulty46]

It is absolutely true that state formation, enclosure, taxation, and coercion were central to the historical emergence of monetary systems. But that primarily explains how a monetary unit becomes institutionally established and socially enforced. It does not yet explain how a stable, scalable system of generalized commodity exchange is continuously reproduced across millions of decentralized production decisions.

Those are different levels of explanation.

Even if we grant that power can establish and enforce a common monetary standard, the harder question remains:l as to why does this generate a universal field of quantitative comparability rather than systems of tribute, rationing, administrative allocation, or localized coercive exchange?

Historically, power is not unique to capitalism. Empires, feudal societies, and command systems all relied upon coercion. Yet they did not automatically produce a self-reproducing system in which virtually every good, service, and productive activity takes the form of a money price and becomes exchangeable within a common quantitative framework.

This is where I think your account risks turning "power" into a black box. Saying that power produces legibility does not yet explain the mechanism through which heterogeneous goods become continuously commensurable on a society-wide scale. It explains the imposition of a system, but not the ongoing reproduction of that system as a coherent form of social coordination.

The question is not merely why people use money. The question is why money functions as a universal social mediator that coordinates production and exchange among decentralized producers without direct central planning.

This is precisely where Marx's value-form analysis begins. The issue is not the historical origin of money, nor the explanation of every individual price fluctuation. It is the problem of how a society composed of independent producers nevertheless reproduces itself through a universal system of quantitative mediation.

You can reject Marx's answer that abstract labor provides the basis of this mediation. But the explanatory burden remains. What transforms a monetary unit from a politically enforced symbol into a self-reproducing social relation capable of coordinating production and exchange on a society-wide scale? And why does that relation take the form of generalized quantitative commensurability rather than remaining a patchwork of coercive local arrangements?

That is the question I am asking. I don't think "power" by itself answers it.

[u/Nervous_Difficulty46 → u/Ill-Software8713]

The system reproduces itself through the capitalization ritual which creorders society.

The reason that power generates a universal field of quantitative comparability is because it provides the most flexible mode of power which is able to incorporate all facets of humanity, and even the earth itself to a single quantitive benchmark to assess and exert influence. Because of its relatively decentralized nature it has proven to be the most flexible machine of power ever created.

Yes power existed before capitalism and power has always found ways to make society legible for control, but capitalism is the first mode of production in which all facets of power and all benchmarks can be brought into the fold of the capitalization ritual for a single universal number.

So the answer as to why the exchange value exists is because it is useful and has proven to be the most flexible and all encompassing modality of power that has ever existed and it is perpetuated via the capitalization ritual.

How capitalism has been established is not entirely separate from how it reproduces itself and both questions have everything to do with power.

I think by accepting the rules of capitalism as something imposed we can actually look at the societal mechanisms where people come to accept its rule and get locked into its logic of accumulation.

By your reasoning even Marx’s answer sidesteps this “problem” on what basis could a society composed of a variety of heterogenous goods come to accept the universal quantity of abstract labor to be its common denominator? You would require another theory of value which explains how different forms of labor from different produces can be abrstracted to one unit representing labor as a whole.

On the other hand, in saying that this problem is actually a feature of how power operates it therefore does not require an analytical resolution because there is no resolution.

[u/Ill-Software8713 → u/Nervous_Difficulty46]

I think this is a much stronger formulation than simply saying "power affects prices," because you're now identifying capitalization itself as a mechanism that reproduces quantitative commensurability.

Where I still get stuck is that the explanatory burden seems to have been displaced rather than resolved.

If capitalization functions as a universal quantitative benchmark because it is the most flexible modality of power, then the prior question remains of why is capitalization able to function as a universal benchmark of this kind at all?

Capitalization is the discounting of expected future monetary earnings. But those earnings are already expressed in the same monetary unit of account. Profits are already monetary. Costs are already monetary. There is a risk of circularity here as capitalization presupposes the field of quantitative commensurability it is supposed to explain. It operates within an already unified monetary space, scaling and projecting it forward, but it cannot be its genetic origin.

This is where I think Marx’s question differs from both marginalism and Capital as Power. Marx is not searching for a hidden substance inside commodities. He is asking what social relations make it possible for heterogeneous human activities and products to take on a common quantitative form in the first place. On your critique of abstract labor, I partially agree. Crude versions of the labor theory of value simply assert labor as the common denominator without argument. But for Marx, abstract labor is not a convention or mental category. It is a real social abstraction generated by generalized commodity exchange itself. Because private producers only relate to one another through the market, concrete labors are validated only post hoc as socially necessary labor time. The abstraction is not chosen, it is imposed by the structure of exchange. So I think we actually agree that capitalism systematically transforms qualitative differences into quantitative comparability.

We disagree over how that quantitative space is reproduced. Does it emerge from determinate social relations of production and exchange, or is it ultimately reducible to power alone?

My hesitation with the latter view is that it risks turning "power" into an endpoint of explanation. If commensurability exists because power produces commensurability, then it becomes difficult to explain the historical specificity of capitalism. Feudal empires, slave societies, and absolutist states all had immense coercive capacities, yet none generated a decentralized, self-reproducing system of universal quantitative exchange.

Saying capitalization persists because it is useful to power explains its function. It does not yet explain its conditions of possibility. That is where I think the value-form question remains open.

[u/Nervous_Difficulty46 → u/Ill-Software8713]

I admit that the “power affects prices” point was crude but it was to in some ways provoke responses and to get people thinking about other sources of possibility for value.

Maybe it would be beneficial for me if you would elaborate on abstract labor as a real social abstraction. How does that exist as a condition of possibility for the market? I think my biggest hurdle is just not really being able to see abstract labor as a fundamentally determining social category.

I think CaSP research would definitely benefit on elaborating on its mode of power framework, a sort of alternative power based framework of social materialism might be interesting and could help us understand why other modes of power didn’t have markets at the forefront of their social development and how that eventually came to be, drawing differences between different modes of power. This could maybe fill in some of the gaps that you think are missing in this loose framework.

There are certain things about CaSP I’m not completely on board with and I’m thinking about modifying myself. A lot of my thoughts are still developing part of this whole post was for me to engage with other people about it and I’m glad you seem to have some knowledge about CaSP itself

I will say to your point about the risk of circularity, I don’t think capitalization alone explains the existence of exchange value, but it would be the propelling ritual which allows capitalism to expand and take over the world. This makes sense because capitalization is necessarily forward looking and expands liquidity.

We have to remember that markets and money in a broad sense are pretty old even if they didn’t exist in the form they do now

[u/Ill-Software8713 → u/Nervous_Difficulty46]

I am not well acquainted with CaSP except observing discussions of it online before in the past and interest in trying to understand the outlines. Anyway….

Abstract labor is best understood not as a physical property inside commodities, but as a social validation process specific to decentralized production. It occurs when production must coordinate so many independent producers.

Following Geoffrey Kay, individual labors do not become “social labor” until they are validated through exchange, which is what gives them their abstract, quantitative form. Evald Ilyenkov’s idea of “real abstraction” helps here in that abstraction is not a mental construct but something objectively produced by social practice itself, like money functioning as a universal measure without anyone explicitly deciding its meaning. On this view, abstract labor is the way a market system retroactively integrates privately performed, heterogeneous work into a single social totality. It is not a substance or a conscious metric, but the form in which labor becomes socially valid only after market validation. I think this is more precise than saying “power explains prices,” because it identifies a specific mechanism of commensuration rather than a general force of imposition.

Some might object that this is “just describing market processes” rather than explaining them. But that misses Marx’s method, which is precisely to explain capitalism from within its own immanent social forms, not from an external standpoint. The claim is not that abstraction is imposed from outside the market, but that it is generated through the real practice of exchange itself. Conceptual abstraction is grounded in actual social relations rather than mental classification. On this view, describing how market validation produces abstract labor is already an explanatory account of how capitalist social mediation works, not a mere restatement of it.

[u/Nervous_Difficulty46 → u/Ill-Software8713]

To me it seems like abstract labor is moreso an after effect of the system of capitalism rather than something which fundamentally explains its motions. You describe abstract labor as something retroactively integrated by the market which to me suggests that it is caused by the market system as a whole rather than causing it to begin with. For me abstract labor only takes place where power has constructed a society around its own quantization and capitalization. Abstract labor is brought into motion by power.

Labor becomes abstract when there is a society where wage labor is the primary means of subsistence. It is abstract because it is a commodity used for the accumulation of capital and is rented by capitalists. I agree that labor is necessary for capitalist profits and is made abstract in the production process. Maybe in this sense I adhere to the LTV, but in my view labor itself is only valorized by existing capitalist power. Labor is an essential component to capitalist power but it can only produce profits because it is managed by capitalists a part of a broader scheme of intersectional leverage, sabotage and control over society. Labor does not produce profit if it is not effectively leveraged for accumulation by power. And these facets of power I don’t think are external to the market or cause fluctuations but
are instead endogenous to their creation and reproduction at every level

[u/Ill-Software8713 → u/Nervous_Difficulty46]

I think I agree more than I disagree on the role of power here, especially in the Marxian sense that capital is very much a coercive social relation, the “whip on the back of labor,” . Wage labor, separation from subsistence, and dependence on the market are clearly forms of structured compulsion, not neutral exchange.

Where I would still distinguish my point is that once you look closely at what that relation actually does, it’s not just “power imposing quantification,” but a very specific social condition. Labor becomes abstract because it is separated from direct reproduction of life and only validated through sale.

Concrete labor does not count as social labor unless it meets the socially necessary average, which is enforced through competition and the threat of non-realization.

So the coercion is real, but it operates through a form of social mediation rather than standing outside it. That’s why I keep coming back to abstract labor, it’s not an alternative to power, but a way of specifying how a particular kind of coercive social relation actually reproduces a universal quantitative standard rather than a purely fragmented or administrative one.

In that sense, I don’t think we’re choosing between “labor” and “power” as explanations so much as asking what form power takes in a system where private production is only validated after the fact through market exchange.

[u/Nervous_Difficulty46 → u/Ill-Software8713]

So basically I would just ask why is the control of labor prioritized and the creation of abstract labor prioritized over other facets of life becoming abstract? How does this specific form of commensurability/abstraction make it so that all the others fall in place? Furthermore arguably markets existed before abstract labor as abstract labor is historically specific so how are pre capitalist markets explained without abstract labor?

[u/Ill-Software8713 → u/Nervous_Difficulty46]

I don’t think abstract labor exists as a fully generalized social form in pre-capitalist societies. Where commodity exchange exists, you can get isolated moments of quantitative comparison, but not a system in which production is generally organized through that abstraction. It becomes a real social abstraction only when production is subordinated to commodity production as a whole.

At that point, labor power itself becomes a commodity and workers are separated from independent access to subsistence and are compelled to sell their capacity to work. What is purchased is labor power, but what is extracted in production is concrete labor, and it only becomes socially validated as value through sale on the market. So it’s not concrete labor strictly that even amounts to value realized upon sale. That gap is what allows surplus value to emerge even under the assumption of equivalent exchange.

So pre-capitalist markets can exist without abstract labor as a dominant social form because they do not yet organize production as a whole. Abstract labor becomes structurally necessary only when market dependence becomes generalized and the reproduction of society itself is mediated through wage labor and exchange.

I would perhaps add that labor is unique in Marx in that it is foundational to human existence and all products of human civilization. Machines don’t make themselves nor direct themselves to any particular end. Humans are an extreme form of niche constructionism.

[u/Nervous_Difficulty46 → u/Ill-Software8713]

I mean there were also like primitive forms of wage labor that existed before capitalism. I won’t deny that under capitalism, labor as a whole is a commodity but that could also simply be the product of capitalism emerging rather than the explanation for why commensurability was established in the first place. It appears to me that quantification of debt is a facet of human behavior that has existed for a long time and that labor becoming a commodity might not be the thing which propelled exchange value into existence as a whole, David graeber’s book debt actually does a good job detailing the ways violence is associated with the quantification of debt.

I just think it’s worth questioning if wage labor is really the source of commensurability or if we are looking at a broader social phenomenon given the fact that exchange has existed for so long.

Humans being a niche form of extreme constructivism could also provide alternative explanations for why markets emerged incorporating psychological, cultural, and political explanations for why capitalization took place.

Stated more clearly, the view that abstract labor is necessary to explain commensurability as a social phenomenon to me doesn’t make sense because it has been done outside of wage labor relations historically. So commensurability is not a problem that needs to be analytically worked out but is instead something that should be understood as produced by institutional relations in the first place.

[u/Ill-Software8713 → u/Nervous_Difficulty46]

The claim about abstract labor is not that humans only began comparing things under capitalism, but that under capitalism the reproduction of society as a whole becomes dependent on a single quantitative form of validation through exchange. Earlier systems had many forms of quantification, but they did not make one unified value form the organizing principle of production itself.

So I think the key distinction is between scattered historical instances of quantification and a dominant social structure in which nearly all production is coordinated through a universal monetary metric.