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"Marx does offer an argument for why labour is taken as the substance of value" The problem here is that we're talking about Smith's LTV and not Marx's. Marx m

by astine 7y ago

"Marx does offer an argument for why labour is taken as the substance of value" The problem here is that we're talking about Smith's LTV and not Marx's. Marx may provide his own reasons for believing in the LTV but he disproved Smith's. So the fact that Marx had these reasons are irrelevant if we're trying to justify Smith's adherence. Though, it is worth pointing out Marx did develop his LTV in part by reading the likes of Smith and Ricardo. The reasons he gives for the LTV in Capital are absent in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in which he merely takes LTV as a given. Actually, that's not quite right, he quotes Smith, Ricardo, and Franklin among others in support of LTV so it's my conjecture that he in fact did see an inconsistency and run with the theory anyway. It was only later in his career that he felt the need to justify that decision.

claudiawerner 7y ago
>Actually, that's not quite right, he quotes Smith, Ricardo, and Franklin among others in support of LTV so it's my conjecture that he in fact did see an inconsistency and run with the theory anyway. Of course, but his quotation is both praising and damning; he believed that he resolved the issue with the dual character of labour power, a qualitatively special commodity, to preserve the integrity of the theory, which previously failed to explain the origin of profits in a capitalist economy. He takes his critique of political economy from the rare gems of insight developed previously (by Smith and Ricardo). His criticism was that the theory as developed in classical political economy is inconsistent, but not inconsistent in the dimension you earlier pointed out - that prices do not match up to labour values. He took that part for granted. Smith's work has holes, at least according to Marx, but the insight he developed, labour being the substance of value (more precisely, exchange value) was crucial to Marx's development of the theory. My point is that the theories can't be lumped together, since Marx presents such a radical break from Ricardo (and thereby Smith).

by astine 7y ago

claudiawerner 7y ago

>Actually, that's not quite right, he quotes Smith, Ricardo, and Franklin among others in support of LTV so it's my conjecture that he in fact did see an inconsistency and run with the theory anyway. Of course, but his quotation is both praising and damning; he believed that he resolved the issue with the dual character of labour power, a qualitatively special commodity, to preserve the integrity of the theory, which previously failed to explain the origin of profits in a capitalist economy. He takes his critique of political economy from the rare gems of insight developed previously (by Smith and Ricardo). His criticism was that the theory as developed in classical political economy is inconsistent, but not inconsistent in the dimension you earlier pointed out - that prices do not match up to labour values. He took that part for granted. Smith's work has holes, at least according to Marx, but the insight he developed, labour being the substance of value (more precisely, exchange value) was crucial to Marx's development of the theory. My point is that the theories can't be lumped together, since Marx presents such a radical break from Ricardo (and thereby Smith).