UE's video on theories of value
Nov. 4th, 2022 08:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highimpactsexi recently finished watching Unlearning Economics's video on the theories of value, which has always been an interesting subject to me. how do we value anything in this world? what is productive and unproductive labor? is there a scientifically "neutral" way to study this objectively?
these kinds of questions are important because it prioritizes what we desire for a functioning society and what we don't. if you subscribe to the marginal theory of utility for example, you'd be pro-consumption. the labor theory of value, on the other hand, is about how workers are the source of all income. the main focus of what we choose to investigate becomes extremely important to our politics. someone more concerned about seeing marginal values will not be able to clearly see the misery of the workers for example.
likewise, we will also regard what is "useful" and "useless" differently depending on the theories of value we have. labor theory of value proponents would hate bankers because they view anyone working in finance as being unproductive and not contributing to the "value" of capital. but even in marx's texts, we see him refer to the "lumpenproletariat" as the vilest class whose labor consists of criminal stuff and cannot be part of the impeding revolution. in other words, he doesn't see people like sex workers as important contributors to the economy. meanwhile, the black panther party's key innovation is arguing how the lumpenproletariats (i.e. the dispossessed black population) are going to lead the charge. these competing ideas and "improvements" upon already existing theories are undeniably important in assessing how capitalism works, even if they differ in ideological content. they are in a sense "reductive" frameworks that choose to emphasize what they believe is important and ironically devalue what isn't.
since these theories of values are ideologically charged, it makes sense for UE to approach them in a pluralist fashion: there are many interesting nuggets of wisdom in the physiocrats, the classical economists, and marx but they haven't provided actual satisfying answers. we should think of them as "lenses" in seeing the world and always assess them as tools. it's all about their explanatory power and we should jettison the ones that don't make sense like the infamous tendency of the rate of profit to fall. no one has to be married to a theory of value, especially if we somewhat agree all are flawed to some degree. we just need to keep refining our understandings of political economy and reassess what we mean is "valuable".
my only main criticism of the video is that marx's theory of value is just ... peculiar and it has nowadays produced industries of alternative readings on how to interpret it. the labor theory of value is not consistently applied by many marxist economists today, especially since it is questionable if marx intended us to just apply the "standard" labor theory onto his critiques. the subtitle is after all "A Critique of Political Economy"; it is not meant to be systemized into One Grand Theory. some radical marxian economists would even argue that it is outside the realm of "verifiable" economics: it's actually metaphysical. most notably these days, michael heinrich and the neue marx-lekture argue that marx never used the labor theory of value and proposed instead a monetary theory supplemented by frankfurt school's hegelianism. they have entirely different understandings on the subject, but i do recognize the video would be longer if UE brought in monetary models. and it might become too complicated and mathematical, which this video already is for the general audience.
this is in the end a critique of how left youtubers/breadtubers will use the labor theory of value uncritically. there's always been fundamental problems with the theory, like the section on the transformation problem suggests. and this is something i believe marx was aware of while writing Capital since he was always trying to push his theories to their utmost limits in order to reveal the "secrets" and "inner laws" of capitalism. hence the insistence of heinrich and co these days to point out Capital is not a book about "solving" capitalism but a Critique with a Capital C on the very nature of capital within capitalism
in this sense, my read of marx has always been "theories of values will always be flawed, so just like wittgenstein's ladder, we gotta kick the ladder and keep moving forward". the joan robinson quote at the end sums it up best: the penetrating insights marx has are important but it sorta doesn't matter if the theory of value is bunk. it's always worth investigating theories of values as they are indeed the jumping off points for new frameworks.
so i would recommend the video to anyone interested in economics and stuff. it's honestly just a pretty rad introduction to the discourses and histories behind theories of value. though i must say the choice in sponsored content is pretty laughable: lmao at a "neutral" aggregator of news websites across the spectrum.
but you gotta earn your bread, especially if talking about economics on left youtube is really a thankless task.
these kinds of questions are important because it prioritizes what we desire for a functioning society and what we don't. if you subscribe to the marginal theory of utility for example, you'd be pro-consumption. the labor theory of value, on the other hand, is about how workers are the source of all income. the main focus of what we choose to investigate becomes extremely important to our politics. someone more concerned about seeing marginal values will not be able to clearly see the misery of the workers for example.
likewise, we will also regard what is "useful" and "useless" differently depending on the theories of value we have. labor theory of value proponents would hate bankers because they view anyone working in finance as being unproductive and not contributing to the "value" of capital. but even in marx's texts, we see him refer to the "lumpenproletariat" as the vilest class whose labor consists of criminal stuff and cannot be part of the impeding revolution. in other words, he doesn't see people like sex workers as important contributors to the economy. meanwhile, the black panther party's key innovation is arguing how the lumpenproletariats (i.e. the dispossessed black population) are going to lead the charge. these competing ideas and "improvements" upon already existing theories are undeniably important in assessing how capitalism works, even if they differ in ideological content. they are in a sense "reductive" frameworks that choose to emphasize what they believe is important and ironically devalue what isn't.
since these theories of values are ideologically charged, it makes sense for UE to approach them in a pluralist fashion: there are many interesting nuggets of wisdom in the physiocrats, the classical economists, and marx but they haven't provided actual satisfying answers. we should think of them as "lenses" in seeing the world and always assess them as tools. it's all about their explanatory power and we should jettison the ones that don't make sense like the infamous tendency of the rate of profit to fall. no one has to be married to a theory of value, especially if we somewhat agree all are flawed to some degree. we just need to keep refining our understandings of political economy and reassess what we mean is "valuable".
my only main criticism of the video is that marx's theory of value is just ... peculiar and it has nowadays produced industries of alternative readings on how to interpret it. the labor theory of value is not consistently applied by many marxist economists today, especially since it is questionable if marx intended us to just apply the "standard" labor theory onto his critiques. the subtitle is after all "A Critique of Political Economy"; it is not meant to be systemized into One Grand Theory. some radical marxian economists would even argue that it is outside the realm of "verifiable" economics: it's actually metaphysical. most notably these days, michael heinrich and the neue marx-lekture argue that marx never used the labor theory of value and proposed instead a monetary theory supplemented by frankfurt school's hegelianism. they have entirely different understandings on the subject, but i do recognize the video would be longer if UE brought in monetary models. and it might become too complicated and mathematical, which this video already is for the general audience.
this is in the end a critique of how left youtubers/breadtubers will use the labor theory of value uncritically. there's always been fundamental problems with the theory, like the section on the transformation problem suggests. and this is something i believe marx was aware of while writing Capital since he was always trying to push his theories to their utmost limits in order to reveal the "secrets" and "inner laws" of capitalism. hence the insistence of heinrich and co these days to point out Capital is not a book about "solving" capitalism but a Critique with a Capital C on the very nature of capital within capitalism
in this sense, my read of marx has always been "theories of values will always be flawed, so just like wittgenstein's ladder, we gotta kick the ladder and keep moving forward". the joan robinson quote at the end sums it up best: the penetrating insights marx has are important but it sorta doesn't matter if the theory of value is bunk. it's always worth investigating theories of values as they are indeed the jumping off points for new frameworks.
so i would recommend the video to anyone interested in economics and stuff. it's honestly just a pretty rad introduction to the discourses and histories behind theories of value. though i must say the choice in sponsored content is pretty laughable: lmao at a "neutral" aggregator of news websites across the spectrum.
but you gotta earn your bread, especially if talking about economics on left youtube is really a thankless task.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-07 08:37 pm (UTC)Talking about value of labor, one nitpick I had with Marx's traditional position was that domestic labor was unproductive labor. But productive, reproductive, and unproductive labor are so hard to differentiate when you realize that things like "making babies and raising them to do be able to do stuff (like work)" is a vital part of economics. It's the start of producing "society" and "culture" and "potential to continue". But how do you value that in money terms, in labor terms? What about when ethics really obviously comes in, when you are paying a lower-class Indian woman to birth a surrogate child? Elder care and child care state funding are being argued about a lot here in the USA right now, too. Obviously trying to obtain the value number for these things through capitalism does not work, but even when discussing it as a potential state funded thing, politicians are so huffy about it. I wonder if people will ever be able to value-ascertain properly.
no subject
Date: 2022-11-09 05:18 am (UTC)i would recommend Full Surrogacy Now by Sophie Lewis if you're interested in surrogacy and the topic of gestational labor by the way.
back to unproductive labor, ernest mandel in his introduction to the penguin translation of Capital, Vol. 2 argues that we should understand the differences between productive and unproductive labor in how they contribute to the capitalist economy. what accrues economic value is necessary here. a classic example of unproductive labor in this marxist lens is "finance" since it doesn't "add value" to this market exchange.
but we can also consider service labor, which leads to some seriously interesting distinctions. would someone working in the gig economy like uber be considered a "productive laborer"? let's quote mr marx here:
what this means then is an uber driver doing their thing won't immediately constitute as "productive" or "unproductive" labor but rather how it is socially constituted. in other words, what's the social context of this work? clarifying this social context means we'll have to understand the production, realization, appropriation, and distribution of surplus value (i.e. profit). for labor to be considered "productive", this work must be exploited for surplus value. therefore, the uber driver is designated a "productive laborer" because the company is extracting surplus labor in order to gain profits.
you can think of "productive labor" then as to what makes capitalism grow. indeed, it might make more sense to think of the term as "capitalistically productive labor". this ties too into social reproductive labor like surrogacy and domestic/household work, though it is hidden from our calculations of shit like the GDP. those are definitely productive labor but they're more social and concerned about our reproduction/sustainability.
this is why i find proposals like degrowth very tantalizing; it recognizes "productive labor" (i.e. any work that contributes to surplus value and therefore growth) as an issue and we must reduce this desire to growth. we should aim to make labor more "unproductive" because "productive labor" is not inherently good. capitalistically productive labor only benefits capital, not the workers. perhaps we should rethink growth as a goal and think of other means of happiness.