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Of course, anyone who is friends with logic will immediately spot that "socially useful" cannot be defined in any way which does not depend on (drumroll) value

Of course, anyone who is friends with logic will immediately spot that "socially useful" cannot be defined in any way which does not depend on (drumroll) value to the people. In other words, all Marx said is that value is created when labor creates value. Duh. Circular reasoning of this sort is a hallmark of kookery, and it takes a rather brainwashed mind (or absence thereof) to miss this obvious logical fallacy. There are other ways to demonstrate the idiocy of the labor theory of value: for example by constructing a realistic scenario when clearly "socially useful" labor (for example, work at a factory) destroys value of a "free for all" resource which wasn't created by labor at all - i.e. by polluting the air). Incidentally, Soviet Union was full of grossly polluting factories. I think a personal anecdote is in order: unlike Western Marx fanboys I happen to be formally educated in Marxism, at the top university in the USSR, no less, (this was mandatory, I wouldn't poison my mind with that junk willingly). The professor reading the course of Political Economy was the well-known Marxist/Leninist textbook author and certainly was quite smart. So after his first or second lecture (I don't remember exactly which, it was 30 years ago), I asked him to clarify exactly the point above: how to define which labor is useful and which it is not. He called me into his office and told me in no uncertain terms to never ask questions like that again if I wanted to stay out of trouble (didn't help), and that the best answer was "whatever Party directs us to work on". This pretty much clarified everything regarding Marxism to me, and I took his advice to heart, so I still have my transcript from MSU with "with distinction" ("отлично") marks for Marxist/Leninist Philosophy, Political Economy, and Scientific Communism. I guess I should thank him for a sound advice on surviving cult indoctrination.

claudiawerner 8y ago
You are equivocating on 'value'; firstly, the law of value only applies to goods which are commodities (complexes of 'use value' and 'exchange value') - the 'use value' would be there even if the good were not traded, and it is usually independent of the exchange value. In various pre-capitalist societies, there were many such goods produced (but, as you can expect, digging a hole might have use value to the person doing it, but not exchange value which is dependent on society in general). Secondly, the law of value only applies to goods which can be freely reprocuded, so it has difficulty with patents and copyrights in modern society, so I don't claim that the law of value 'works' for all categories of products in today's society. Either way, you shouldn't act as though you and your professor uncovered some kind of devastating flaw in Marxism, even at the time; it takes a lot of hubris to accuse modern political economists and Marxists of being brainwashed to such a basic 'logical fallacy'. The law of value works such that a person digging a hole in the ground obviously isn't producing exchange value, thus the person digging a hole won't continue to do so, in the long run in society, the value of commodities is quickly realized. Here's a good page on the 'mud pie' (hole digging) argument: https://libcom.org/library/law-value-3-das-mudpie https://libcom.org/library/law-value-3-das-mudpie

claudiawerner 8y ago

You are equivocating on 'value'; firstly, the law of value only applies to goods which are commodities (complexes of 'use value' and 'exchange value') - the 'use value' would be there even if the good were not traded, and it is usually independent of the exchange value. In various pre-capitalist societies, there were many such goods produced (but, as you can expect, digging a hole might have use value to the person doing it, but not exchange value which is dependent on society in general). Secondly, the law of value only applies to goods which can be freely reprocuded, so it has difficulty with patents and copyrights in modern society, so I don't claim that the law of value 'works' for all categories of products in today's society. Either way, you shouldn't act as though you and your professor uncovered some kind of devastating flaw in Marxism, even at the time; it takes a lot of hubris to accuse modern political economists and Marxists of being brainwashed to such a basic 'logical fallacy'. The law of value works such that a person digging a hole in the ground obviously isn't producing exchange value, thus the person digging a hole won't continue to do so, in the long run in society, the value of commodities is quickly realized. Here's a good page on the 'mud pie' (hole digging) argument: https://libcom.org/library/law-value-3-das-mudpie https://libcom.org/library/law-value-3-das-mudpie