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{{Short description|Economic hypothesis}}
{{Use American English|date=March 2021}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2021}}
{{Marxian economics|sp=us}}
The '''labor theory of value''' ('''LTV''') is a [[theory of value (economics)|theory of value]] that argues that the [[exchange value]] of a good or service is determined by the total amount of "[[Socially necessary labour time|socially necessary labor]]" required to produce it. The contrasting system is typically known as the [[subjective theory of value]].

The LTV is usually associated with [[Marxian economics]], although it originally appeared in the theories of earlier [[classical economics|classical economists]] such as [[Adam Smith]] and [[David Ricardo]], and later in [[anarchist economics]]. Smith saw the price of a commodity as a reflection of how much labor it can "save" the purchaser. The LTV is central to Marxist theory, which holds that capitalists' expropriation of the [[surplus value]] produced by the [[working class]] is [[Exploitation of labour|exploitative]]. Modern [[mainstream economics]] rejects the LTV and uses a theory of value based on subjective [[Preference (economics)|preferences]].<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/preferences/ |title=Preferences |date=November 14, 2017 |access-date=November 21, 2020 |website=[[The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]] (Summer 2018 Edition) |last1=Hansson |first1=Sven Ove |last2=Grüne-Yanoff |first2=Till |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |title=The Common Sense of Political Economy, Including a Study of the Human Basis of Economic Law |last=Wicksteed |first=Philip H. |publisher=[[Macmillan and Co.]] |year=1910 |location=London |url=https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/wicksteed-the-commonsense-of-political-economy |url-status=live |author-link=Philip Wicksteed |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201020224441/https://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/wicksteed-the-commonsense-of-political-economy |archive-date=October 20, 2020}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Hunt |first1=E. K. |title=History of economic thought l: a critical perspective |date=2011 |publisher=[[M. E. Sharpe]] |last2=Lautzenheiser |first2=Mark |isbn=978-1-317-46859-2 |edition=3rd |location=Armonk, New York |oclc=903283190}}</ref>

== Definitions of value and labor ==
According to the LTV, value refers to the amount of [[Socially necessary labour time|socially necessary labor]] to produce a marketable commodity; According to Ricardo and Marx, this includes the labor components necessary to develop any [[Constant capital|real capital]] (i.e., physical assets used to produce other assets).<ref>It is now interpreted that Ricardo's theory of value is not the labor theory of value, but the cost of production theory of value. See [[David Ricardo#Value theory]]</ref><ref>e.g. see - Junankar, P. N., ''Marx's economics'', Oxford : Philip Allan, 1982, {{ISBN|0-86003-125-X}} or Peach, Terry "Interpreting Ricardo", Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]], 1993, {{ISBN|0-521-26086-8}}</ref> Including these indirect labor components, sometimes described as "dead labor,"<ref>{{Cite book |first=Chris |last=Harman |title=How Marxism Works |chapter=5. The labour theory of value) |chapter-url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1979/marxism/ch05.html |access-date=February 4, 2024 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |quote=Everything people have used historically to create wealth – whether a Neolithic stone axe or a modern computer – once had to be made by human labour. Even if the axe was shaped with tools, the tools in turn were the product of previous labour. That is why Karl Marx used to refer to the means of production as ‘dead labour’. When businessmen boast of the capital they possess, in reality they are boasting that they have gained control of a vast pool of the labour of previous generations – and that does not mean the labour of their ancestors, who laboured no more than they do now.}}</ref> provides the "real price," or "natural price" of a commodity. However, [[Adam Smith]]'s version of labor value does not implicate the role of past labor in the commodity itself or in the tools (capital) required to produce it.<ref>{{Cite web |author-link=Adam Smith |last=Smith |first=Adam |title=Wealth of Nations — Bk 1 Chpt 05 |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/smith-adam/works/wealth-of-nations/book01/ch05.htm |access-date=February 4, 2024 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |quote=The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What every thing is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people.}}</ref>

=== Distinctions of economically pertinent labor ===
"Value in use" is the usefulness or [[utility]] of a commodity. A classical [[Paradox of value|paradox]] often comes up when considering this type of value.

In a passage of Adam Smith's ''[[The Wealth of Nations|An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations]]'', he discusses the concepts of value in use and value in exchange, and notices how they tend to differ:{{blockquote|The word VALUE, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called "[[use value|value in use]];" the other, "[[exchange value|value in exchange]]." The things which have the greatest value in use have frequently little or no value in exchange; on the contrary, those which have the greatest value in exchange have frequently little or no value in use. Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarcely anything; scarcely anything can be had in exchange for it. A diamond, on the contrary, has scarcely any use-value; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it.<ref name="TWON1">{{cite book |author-link=Adam Smith |last=Smith |first=Adam |title=An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations |chapter=Of the Origin and Use of Money |year=1776}}</ref>}}Value "in [[Trade|exchange]]" is the relative proportion with which this commodity exchanges for another commodity (in other words, its [[price]] in the case of [[money]]). It is relative to labor as explained by Adam Smith: <blockquote>The value of any commodity, [...] to the person who possesses it, and who means not to use or consume it himself, but to exchange it for other commodities, is equal to the quantity of labour which it enables him to purchase or command. Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities (''Wealth of Nations'' Book 1, chapter V).</blockquote>

According to the classical economists, value is the labor embodied in a commodity under a given structure of production. Marx called this the "[[Socially necessary labour time|socially necessary labor]]" but it is sometimes also called the "real cost" or "absolute value".<ref>Ricardo, David (1823), 'Absolute Value and Exchange Value', in "The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo", Volume 4, Cambridge University Press, 1951 and Sraffa, Piero and Maurice Dobb (1951), 'Introduction', in "The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo", Volume 1, Cambridge University Press, 1951.</ref>

== Relation between values and prices ==
While the LTV posits that value is primarily determined by labor, it recognizes that the actual price of a commodity is influenced in the short-term by the profit motive<ref>{{Cite report |url=https://econpapers.repec.org/bookchap/oettbooks/prin7.htm |title=Human Society and the Global Economy |last=Taylor |first=Kit Sims |date=2001 |publisher=SUNY-Oswego, Department of Economics |quote=Value lies at the core of the economic adjustment process. If the actual price of something were above the value, the extra profits to be made would attract more firms into that industry leading to a greater supply and – eventually – lower prices; conversely, if the actual price of something were below the value, the losses – or sub-normal profits – would drive firms out of that industry leading to a smaller supply and – eventually – higher prices.}}</ref> and market conditions, including supply and demand<ref>{{Cite web |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |title=Economic Manuscripts: Value, Price and Profit |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch01.htm |access-date=28 January 2024 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |quote=You would be altogether mistaken in fancying that the value of labour or any other commodity whatever is ultimately fixed by supply and demand. Supply and demand regulate nothing but the temporary fluctuations of market prices. They will explain to you why the market price of a commodity rises above or sinks below its value, but they can never account for the value itself. Suppose supply and demand to equilibrate, or, as the economists call it, to cover each other. Why, the very moment these opposite forces become equal they paralyze each other, and cease to work in the one or other direction. At the moment when supply and demand equilibrate each other, and therefore cease to act, the market price of a commodity coincides with its real value, with the standard price round which its market prices oscillate. In inquiring into the nature of that VALUE, we have therefore nothing at all to do with the temporary effects on market prices of supply and demand. The same holds true of wages and of the prices of all other commodities.}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Rubin |first=Isaak Ilyich |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=moJGEAAAQBAJ&q=supply+demand+%22socially+necessary%22&pg=PA57 |title=Essays on Marx's Theory of Value |date=2020 |publisher=Pattern Books |isbn=978-3-0340-0472-5 |language=en |quote="...even though the quantity of socially-necessary labor required for the production of one pair of shoes did not change, because of the excessive supply the shoes are sold according to a market price which is below the market-value determined by the socially-necessary labor. The interpreters of Marx ...establish... an 'economic' concept of necessary labor i.e., recognizing that socially-necessary labor changes not only in relation to changes in the productive power of labor but also in relation to changes in the balance between social supply and demand."}}</ref> and the extent of monopolization.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Ernest Mandel: The Labor Theory of Value and "Monopoly Capitalism" (1967) |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/mandel/1967/03/ltv-mcap.htm |access-date=2024-01-29 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |quote=The labor theory of value implies that, in terms of value, the total mass of surplus value to be distributed every year is a given quantity. It depends on the value of variable capital and on the rate of surplus value. Price competition cannot change that given quantity (except when it influences the division of the newly created income between workers and capitalists, i.e. depresses or increases real wages, and thereby increases or depresses the rate of surplus value)...It means that the distribution of the given quantity of surplus value is changed, in favor of the monopolists and at the expense of the non-monopolized sectors....Under monopoly capitalism as under “competitive capitalism” the two basic forces explaining capital accumulation remain competition between capitalists (for appropriating bigger shares of surplus value) and competition between capitalists and workers (for increasing the rate of surplus value)."}}</ref> Adherents to the LTV conceptualize value (i.e., socially necessary labor time) as a "center of gravity" for price over the long-term.<ref>{{cite book |doi=10.4337/9781786430649 |title=Value, Competition and Exploitation |date=2018 |last1=Cogliano |first1=Jonathan F. |last2=Flaschel |first2=Peter |last3=Franke |first3=Reiner |last4=Fröhlich |first4=Nils |last5=Veneziani |first5=Roberto |isbn=978-1-78643-064-9 |url=http://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/52466 }}{{pn|date=May 2025}}</ref>{{sfn|Marx|1867}}

In Book 1, chapter VI, Adam Smith writes:
<blockquote>The real value of all the different component parts of price, it must be observed, is measured by the quantity of labour which they can, each of them, purchase or command. Labour measures the value not only of that part of price which resolves itself into labour, but of that which resolves itself into rent, and of that which resolves itself into profit.</blockquote>

The final sentence explains how Smith sees value of a product as relative to labor of buyer or consumer, as opposite to Marx who sees the value of a product being proportional to labor of laborer or producer. And we value things, price them, based on how much labor we can avoid or command, and we can command labor not only in a simple way but also by [[Trade|trading]] things for a profit.

The demonstration of the relation between commodities' unit values and their respective prices is known in Marxian terminology as the [[transformation problem]] or the transformation of values into prices of production. The transformation problem has probably generated the greatest bulk of debate about the LTV. The problem with transformation is to find an algorithm where the magnitude of value added by labor, in proportion to its duration and intensity, is sufficiently accounted for after this value is distributed through prices that reflect an equal rate of return on capital advanced. If there is an additional magnitude of value or a loss of value after transformation, then the relation between values (proportional to labor) and prices (proportional to total capital advanced) is incomplete. Various solutions and impossibility theorems have been offered for the transformation, but the debate has not reached any clear resolution.

LTV does not deny the role of supply and demand influencing price, but suggests that value and price are equivalent when supply-demand equilibrium is met. In ''Value, Price and Profit'' (1865), [[Karl Marx]] paraphrases [[Adam Smith]]:
<blockquote>It suffices to say that if supply and demand equilibrate each other, the market prices of commodities will correspond with their natural prices, that is to say, with their values as determined by the respective quantities of labor required for their production.<ref name="marxprofit">{{cite book |last=Marx |first=Karl |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price-profit/ch02.htm#c6 |title=Value, Price and Profit |date=1865 |chapter=Value and Labour |author-link=Karl Marx |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref></blockquote>

The LTV seeks to explain the level of this equilibrium. This could be explained by a ''[[cost of production]]'' argument—pointing out that all costs are ultimately labor costs, but this does not account for profit, and it is vulnerable to the charge of [[Tautology (rhetoric)|tautology]] in that it explains prices by prices.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Sraffa |first1=Piero |title=The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo |last2=Dobb |first2=Maurice H. |date=1951 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |volume=1 |chapter=General Preface}}</ref> Marx later called this "Smith's adding up theory of value".

Smith argues that labor values are the natural measure of exchange for direct producers like hunters and fishermen.<ref name="ormazabal">{{cite web |last=Ormazabal |first=Kepa M. |date=2006 |title=Adam Smith on Labor and Value: Challenging the Standard Interpretation |url=https://www.ehu.eus/documents/2276258/2294671/il2006_26.pdf |publisher=[[University of the Basque Country]] |archive-url= |archive-date=}}</ref> Marx, on the other hand, uses a measurement analogy, arguing that for commodities to be comparable they must have a common element or substance by which to measure them,<ref name="marxprofit" /> and that labor is a common substance of what Marx eventually calls ''commodity-values''.{{sfn|Marx|1867}}

== Labor process ==
Since the term "value" is understood in the LTV as denoting something created by labor, and its "magnitude" as something proportional to the quantity of labor performed, it is important to explain how the labor process both preserves value and adds new value in the commodities it creates.<ref group="note">Unless otherwise noted, the description of the labor process and the role of the value of means of production in this section are drawn from chapter 7 of ''Capital'' vol1 {{harv|Marx|1867}}.</ref>

The value of a commodity increases in proportion to the duration and intensity of labor performed on average for its production. Part of what the LTV means by "socially necessary" is that the value only increases in proportion to this labor as it is performed with average skill and average productivity. So though workers may labor with greater skill or more productivity than others, these more skillful and more productive workers thus produce more value through the production of greater quantities of the finished commodity. Each unit still bears the same value as all the others of the same class of commodity. By working sloppily, unskilled workers may drag down the average skill of labor, thus increasing the average labor time necessary for the production of each unit commodity. But these unskillful workers cannot hope to sell the result of their labor process at a higher price (as opposed to value) simply because they have spent more time than other workers producing the same kind of commodities.

However, production not only involves labor, but also certain means of labor: tools, materials, power plants and so on. These means of labor—also known as [[means of production]]—are often the product of another labor process as well. So the labor process inevitably involves these means of production that already enter the process with a certain amount of value. Labor also requires other means of production that are not produced with labor and therefore bear no value: such as sunlight, air, uncultivated land, unextracted minerals, etc. While useful, even crucial to the production process, these bring no value to that process. In terms of means of production resulting from another labor process, LTV treats the magnitude of value of these produced means of production as constant throughout the labor process. Due to the constancy of their value, these means of production are referred to, in this light, as constant capital.

Consider for example workers who take coffee beans, use a roaster to roast them, and then use a brewer to brew and dispense a fresh cup of coffee. In performing this labor, these workers add value to the coffee beans and water that compose the material ingredients of a cup of coffee. The worker also transfers the value of constant capital—the value of the beans; some specific depreciated value of the roaster and the brewer; and the value of the cup—to the value of the final cup of coffee. Again, on average, the worker can transfer no more than the value of these means of labor previously possessed to the finished cup of coffee.<ref group="note">In the case of instruments of labor, such as the roaster and the brewer (or even a ceramic cup), the value transferred to the cup of coffee is only a depreciated value calculated over the life of those instruments of labor according to some accounting convention.</ref> So the value of coffee produced in a day equals the sum of both the value of the means of labor—this constant capital—and the value newly added by the worker in proportion to the duration and intensity of their work.

Often this is expressed mathematically as:
{{block indent|<math>c+L=W</math>,}}
where
* <math>c</math> is the constant capital of materials used in a period plus the depreciated portion of tools and plant used in the process. (A period is typically a day, week, year, or a single turnover: meaning the time required to complete one batch of coffee, for example.)
* <math>L</math> is the quantity of labor time (average skill and productivity) performed in producing the finished commodities during the period
* <math>W</math> is the value (or think "worth") of the product of the period (<math>w</math> comes from the German word for value: ''wert'')
Note: if the product resulting from the labor process is homogeneous (all similar in quality and traits, for example, all cups of coffee) then the value of the period's product can be divided by the total number of items (use-values or <math>v_u</math>) produced to derive the unit value of each item. <math>\begin{matrix}w_i= \frac{W}{\sum v_u}\,\end{matrix}</math> where <math>\begin{matrix}\sum v_u\end{matrix}</math> is the total items produced.

The LTV further divides the value added during the period of production, <math>L</math>, into two parts. The first part is the portion of the process when the workers add value equivalent to the wages they are paid. For example, if the period in question is one week and these workers collectively are paid $1,000, then the time necessary to add $1,000 to—while preserving the value of—constant capital is considered the necessary labor portion of the period (or week): denoted <math>NL</math>. The remaining period is considered the surplus labor portion of the week: or <math>SL</math>. The value used to purchase labor-power, for example, the $1,000 paid in wages to these workers for the week, is called variable capital (<math>v</math>). This is because in contrast to the constant capital expended on means of production, variable capital can add value in the labor process. The amount it adds depends on the duration, intensity, productivity and skill of the labor-power purchased: in this sense, the buyer of labor-power has purchased a commodity of variable use. Finally, the value added during the portion of the period when surplus labor is performed is called [[surplus value]] (<math>s</math>). From the variables defined above, we find two other common expressions for the value produced during a given period:
{{block indent|<math>c+v+s=W</math>}}
and
{{block indent|<math>c+NL+SL=W</math>}}

The first form of the equation expresses the value resulting from production, focusing on the costs <math>c+v</math> and the surplus value appropriated in the process of production, <math>s</math>. The second form of the equation focuses on the value of production in terms of the values added by the labor performed during the process <math>NL+SL</math>.

== History ==
=== Origins ===
The labor theory of value has developed over many centuries. It had no single originator, but rather many different thinkers arrived at the same conclusion independently. Aristotle is claimed to hold to this view.<ref>{{cite book |last=MacIntyre |first=A. |year=1988 |title=Whose Justice Which Rationality |location=Notre Dame |publisher=[[University of Notre Dame]] |page=199 |isbn=978-0-268-01942-6}}</ref> Some writers trace its origin to [[Thomas Aquinas]].<ref>{{cite book |last=Russell |first=Bertrand |author-link=Bertrand Russell |year=1946 |title=History of Western philosophy |page=578}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Baeck |first=L. |year=1994 |title=The Mediterranean tradition in economic thought |location=New York |publisher=[[Routledge]] |page=151 |isbn=978-0-415-09301-9}}</ref> In his ''[[Summa Theologica|Summa Theologiae]]'' (1265–1274) he expresses the view that "value can, does and should increase in relation to the amount of labor which has been expended in the improvement of commodities."<ref>{{cite book |first1=Austin J. |last1=Jaffe |first2=Kenneth M. |last2=Lusht |chapter=The History of the Value Theory: The Early Years |page=11 |title=Essays in honor of William N. Kinnard, Jr |year=2003 |location=Boston |publisher=[[Kluwer Academic]] |isbn=978-1-4020-7516-2}}</ref> Scholars such as [[Joseph Schumpeter]] have cited [[Ibn Khaldun]], who in his ''[[Muqaddimah]]'' (1377), described labor as the source of value, necessary for all earnings and [[capital accumulation]]. He argued that even if earning "results from something other than a craft, the value of the resulting profit and acquired (capital) must (also) include the value of the labor by which it was obtained. Without labor, it would not have been acquired."<ref name="Oweiss">{{cite book |first=I. M. |last=Oweiss |year=1988 |chapter=Ibn Khaldun, the Father of Economics |title=Arab Civilization: Challenges and Responses |publisher=[[New York University Press]] |isbn=978-0-88706-698-6 |page=114}}</ref> Scholars have also pointed to [[Sir William Petty]]'s ''Treatise of Taxes'' of 1662<ref>{{cite book |volume=I |first=Vernon L. |last=Parrington |title=Main Currents in American Thought, 1620-1800 |year=1927 |url=http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/Parrington/vol1/bk02_01_ch03.html |at=Book Two, Part One, Chapter III. Benjamin Franklin: Our First Ambassador |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191024162257/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/Parrington/vol1/bk02_01_ch03.html |archive-date=24 October 2019}}</ref> and to [[John Locke]]'s [[labor theory of property]], set out in the ''[[Two Treatises of Government|Second Treatise on Government]]'' (1689), which sees labor as the ultimate source of economic value. [[Karl Marx]] himself credited [[Benjamin Franklin]] in his 1729 essay entitled "A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency" as being "one of the first" to advance the theory.<ref>{{cite book |first=Karl |last=Marx |author-link=Karl Marx |title=Value, Price and Profit |title-link=Value, Price and Profit |date=1865 |chapter=VI}}</ref>

[[Adam Smith]] accepted the theory for pre-capitalist societies but saw a flaw in its application to contemporary [[capitalism]]. He pointed out that if the "labor embodied" in a product equaled the "labor commanded" (i.e. the amount of labor that could be purchased by selling it), then profit was impossible. [[David Ricardo]] (seconded by [[Karl Marx|Marx]]) responded to this paradox by arguing that Smith had confused labor with wages. "Labor commanded", he argued, would always be more than the labor needed to sustain itself (wages). The value of labor, in this view, covered not just the value of wages (what Marx called the value of [[labor power]]), but the value of the entire product created by labor.<ref name="ormazabal" />

Ricardo's theory was a predecessor of the modern theory that equilibrium prices are determined solely by [[Cost-of-production theory of value|production costs]] associated with [[Neo-Ricardianism]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/schools/neoric.htm |title=The Neo-Ricardians |access-date=2004-08-23 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090418155154/http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/schools/neoric.htm |archive-date=April 18, 2009 |publisher=[[New School University]]}}</ref>

Based on the discrepancy between the wages of labor and the value of the product, the "[[Ricardian socialists]]"—[[Charles Hall (economist)|Charles Hall]], [[Thomas Hodgskin]], [[John Gray (19th century socialist)|John Gray]], and [[John Francis Bray]], and [[Percy Ravenstone]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/schools/utopia.htm |title=Utopians and Socialists: Ricardian Socialists |access-date=2015-07-12 |url-status=bot: unknown |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040214153800/http://cepa.newschool.edu/het/schools/utopia.htm |archive-date=February 14, 2004 |publisher=History of Economic Thought, [[New School University]]}}</ref>—applied Ricardo's theory to develop theories of [[Exploitation of labour|exploitation]].

Marx expanded on these ideas, arguing that workers work for a part of each day adding the value required to cover their wages, while the remainder of their labor is performed for the enrichment of the capitalist. The LTV and the accompanying theory of exploitation became central to his economic thought.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

19th century [[American individualist anarchists]] based their economics on the LTV, with their particular interpretation of it being called "[[Cost the limit of price]]". They, as well as contemporary individualist anarchists in that tradition, hold that it is unethical to charge a higher price for a commodity than the amount of labor required to produce it. Hence, they propose that trade should be facilitated by using notes backed by labor.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

=== Adam Smith and David Ricardo ===
Adam Smith held that, in a [[Urgesellschaft|primitive society]], the amount of labor put into producing a good determined its exchange value, with exchange value meaning, in this case, the amount of labor a good can purchase. However, according to Smith, in a more advanced society the market price is no longer proportional to labor cost since the value of the good now includes compensation for the owner of the means of production: "The whole produce of labour does not always belong to the labourer. He must in most cases share it with the owner of the stock which employs him."<ref name="Whitaker History and Criticism pp15-16">{{cite book |doi=10.7312/whit91420 |date=1904 |isbn=978-0-231-88365-8 |last1=Whitaker |first1=Albert C. |title=History and Criticism of the Labor Theory of Value in English Political Economy |publisher=Columbia University Press |pages=15–16 }}</ref> According to Whitaker, Smith is claiming that the 'real value' of such a commodity produced in advanced society is measured by the labor which that commodity will command in exchange but "[Smith] disowns what is naturally thought of as the genuine classical labor theory of value, that labor-cost regulates market-value. This theory was Ricardo's, and really his alone."<ref name="Whitaker History and Criticism pp15-16"/>

Classical economist David Ricardo's labor theory of value holds that the [[Value (economics)|value]] of a [[good (economics)|good]] (how much of another good or service it exchanges for in the market) is proportional to how much [[labour (economics)|labor]] was required to produce it, including the labor required to produce the raw materials and machinery used in the process. [[David Ricardo]] stated it as, "The value of a commodity, or the quantity of any other commodity for which it will exchange, depends on the relative quantity of labour which is necessary for its production, and not on the greater or less compensation which is paid for that labour."<ref>{{Cite book |title=On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation |first=David |last=Ricardo |year=1817 |url=https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/ricardo/tax/ch01.htm |access-date=August 19, 2020 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> In this connection Ricardo seeks to differentiate the quantity of labor necessary to produce a commodity from the wages paid to the laborers for its production. Therefore, wages did not always increase with the price of a commodity. However, Ricardo was troubled with some deviations in prices from proportionality with the labor required to produce them.<ref>{{cite book |doi=10.1057/978-1-349-95121-5_1054-2 |date=2008 |isbn=978-1-349-95121-5 |last1=Vianello |first1=Fernando |title=The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics |chapter=Labour Theory of Value |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK |location=London |authorlink1=Fernando Vianello |pages=233–246 }}</ref> For example, he said "I cannot get over the difficulty of the wine, which is kept in the cellar for three or four years [i.e., while constantly increasing in exchange value], or that of the oak tree, which perhaps originally had not 2 s. expended on it in the way of labour, and yet comes to be worth £100." (Quoted in Whitaker) Of course, a capitalist economy stabilizes this discrepancy until the value added to aged wine is equal to the cost of storage. If anyone can hold onto a bottle for four years and become rich, that would make it hard to find freshly corked wine. There is also the theory that adding to the price of a [[luxury goods|luxury]] product increases its [[exchange-value]] by mere prestige.

The labor theory as an explanation for value contrasts with the [[subjective theory of value]], which says that value of a good is not determined by how much labor was put into it but by its usefulness in satisfying a want and its scarcity. Ricardo's labor theory of value is not a [[Normative economics|normative]] theory, as are some later forms of the labor theory, such as claims that it is ''immoral'' for an individual to be paid less for his labor than the total revenue that comes from the sales of all the goods he produces.{{fact|date=May 2025}}

It is arguable to what extent these classical theorists held the labor theory of value as it is commonly defined.<ref>{{cite book |doi=10.7312/whit91420 |date=1904 |isbn=978-0-231-88365-8 |last1=Whitaker |first1=Albert C. |title=History and Criticism of the Labor Theory of Value in English Political Economy |publisher=Columbia University Press }}{{pn|date=April 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Gordon |first1=Donald F. |title=What Was the Labor Theory of Value? |journal=The American Economic Review |date=1959 |volume=49 |issue=2 |pages=462–472 |jstor=1816138 }}</ref><ref>King, Peter and Ripstein, Arthur. [http://individual.utoronto.ca/pking/unpublished/LTV.pdf "Did Marx Hold a Labor Theory of Value?"] University of Toronto</ref> For instance, [[David Ricardo]] theorized that prices are determined by the amount of labor but found exceptions for which the labor theory could not account. In a letter, he wrote: "I am not satisfied with the explanation I have given of the principles which regulate value." [[Adam Smith]] theorized that the labor theory of value holds true only in the "early and rude state of society" but not in a modern economy where owners of capital are compensated by profit. As a result, "Smith ends up making little use of a labor theory of value."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Canterbery |first1=E. Ray |title=Brief History Of Economics, A: Artful Approaches To The Dismal Science |date=2001 |publisher=World Scientific Publishing Company |isbn=978-981-310-547-8 |pages=52–53 }}</ref>

=== Anarchism ===
{{See also|Anarchist economics|Cost the limit of price}}
[[File:LaborNote.JPG|thumb|left|Sample labor for [[labor note]] for the [[Cincinnati Time Store]]. Scanned from ''Equitable Commerce'' (1846) by [[Josiah Warren]]]]
[[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]]'s [[Mutualism (economic theory)|mutualism]]<ref>{{cite web |quote=Thus, the classical solution of expressing the value of goods and services in terms of man hours, which was developed by the orthodox (political) economists of the time, was adopted by both Proudhon and Marx. |url=http://www.inclusivedemocracy.org/dn/vol6/takis_proudhon.htm |title=Beyond Marx and Proudhon |author-link=Takis Fotopoulos |first=Takis |last=Fotopoulos}}</ref> and [[American individualist anarchists]] such as [[Josiah Warren]], [[Lysander Spooner]] and [[Benjamin Tucker]]<ref>"The most basic difference is that the individualist anarchists rooted their ideas in the labour theory of value while the "anarcho"-capitalists favour mainstream marginalist theory." [http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionG1 An Anarchist FAQ] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130315000327/http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionG1 |date=2013-03-15 }}</ref> adopted the labor theory of value of [[classical economics]] and used it to criticize capitalism while favoring a non-capitalist market system.<ref>"Like Proudhon, they desired a (libertarian) socialist system based on the market but without exploitation and which rested on possession rather than capitalist private property."[http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionG1 An Anarchist FAQ] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130315000327/http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionG1 |date=2013-03-15 }}</ref>

Warren is widely regarded as the first American [[anarchist]],<ref name="Slate">Palmer, Brian (2010-12-29) [http://www.slate.com/id/2279457/ What do anarchists want from us?], ''[[Slate.com]]''</ref><ref name="Mises">Riggenbach, Jeff (2011-02-25) [https://mises.org/daily/5067/Josiah-Warren-The-First-American-Anarchist Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist], ''[[Mises Institute]]''</ref> and the four-page weekly paper he edited during 1833, ''The Peaceful Revolutionist'', was the first anarchist periodical published.<ref name="bailie20">William Bailie, {{cite web|url=http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/warren/1stAmAnarch.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2013-06-17 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120204155505/http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/warren/1stAmAnarch.pdf |archive-date=2012-02-04 }} ''Josiah Warren: The First American Anarchist – A Sociological Study'', Boston: Small, Maynard & Co., 1906, p. 20</ref> [[Cost the limit of price]] was a maxim coined by Warren, indicating a ([[linguistic prescription|prescriptive]]) version of the labor theory of value. Warren maintained that the [[Justice|just]] compensation for labor (or for its product) could only be an equivalent amount of labor (or a product embodying an equivalent amount).<ref name="warren1">In ''Equitable Commerce'', Warren writes, "If a priest is required to get a soul out of purgatory, he sets his price according to the value which the relatives set upon his prayers, instead of their cost to the priest. This, again, is cannibalism. The same amount of labor equally disagreeable, with equal wear and tear, performed by his customers, would be a just remuneration</ref> Thus, [[profit (economics)|profit]], [[economic rent|rent]], and [[interest]] were considered unjust economic arrangements.<ref name="mcelroy">Wendy McElroy, "[http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/mcelroy1.html Individualist Anarchism vs. "Libertarianism" and Anarchocommunism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/19980206075653/http://flag.blackened.net/daver/anarchism/mcelroy1.html |date=1998-02-06 }}," in the ''New Libertarian'', issue #12, October, 1984.</ref> In keeping with the tradition of [[Adam Smith]]'s ''[[The Wealth of Nations]]'',<ref>Smith writes: "The real price of every thing, what every thing really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it." Note, also, the sense of "labor" meaning "suffering".</ref> the "cost" of labor is considered to be the [[subjectivity|subjective]] cost; i.e., the amount of suffering involved in it.<ref name="warren1" /> He put his theories to the test by establishing an experimental "labor for labor store" called the [[Cincinnati Time Store]] at the corner of 5th and Elm Streets in what is now downtown Cincinnati, where trade was facilitated by notes backed by a promise to perform labor. "All the goods offered for sale in Warren's store were offered at the same price the merchant himself had paid for them, plus a small surcharge, in the neighborhood of 4 to 7 percent, to cover store overhead."<ref name="Mises" /> The store stayed open for three years; after it closed, Warren could pursue establishing colonies based on Mutualism. These included "[[Utopia, Ohio|Utopia]]" and "[[Modern Times (community)|Modern Times]]". Warren said that [[Stephen Pearl Andrews]]' ''The Science of Society'', published in 1852, was the most lucid and complete exposition of Warren's own theories.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Madison |first1=Charles A. |title=Anarchism in the United States |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |date=1945 |volume=6 |issue=1 |pages=46–66 |doi=10.2307/2707055 |jstor=2707055 }}</ref>

Mutualism is an [[economics|economic theory]] and [[anarchist school of thought]] that advocates a society where each person might possess a [[means of production]], either individually or collectively, with trade representing equivalent amounts of labor in the [[free market]].<ref>{{cite web|last = Carson |first = Kevin A. |title = Introduction |url = https://www.mutualist.org/ |website = Mutualist.org |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20250604074956/https://www.mutualist.org/ |archive-date = 2025-06-04 |access-date = 2025-06-11 |url-status = live}}</ref> Integral to the scheme was the establishment of a mutual-credit bank that would lend to producers at a minimal interest rate, just high enough to cover administration.<ref>Miller, David. 1987. "Mutualism." The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Political Thought. Blackwell Publishing. p. 11</ref> Mutualism is based on a labor theory of value that holds that when labor or its product is sold, in exchange, it ought to receive goods or services embodying "the amount of labor necessary to produce an article of exactly similar and equal utility".<ref>Tandy, Francis D., 1896, ''[[Voluntary Socialism]]'', chapter 6, paragraph 15.</ref> Mutualism originated from the writings of philosopher [[Pierre-Joseph Proudhon]].

[[Collectivist anarchism]] as defended by [[Mikhail Bakunin]] defended a form of labor theory of value when it advocated a system where "all necessaries for production are owned in common by the labor groups and the free communes&nbsp;... based on the distribution of goods according to the labor contributed".<ref>{{cite web|author=Darby Tillis |url=http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionA3 |title=An Anarchist FAQ |publisher=Infoshop.org |access-date=2010-09-20 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101123103313/http://www.infoshop.org/page/AnarchistFAQSectionA3 |archive-date=2010-11-23 }}</ref>

=== Karl Marx<!--'Marx's theory of value', 'Marxian theory of value' and 'Marxist theory of value' redirect here--> ===
Contrary to popular belief, Marx never used the term "labor theory of value" in any of his works, but used the term [[law of value]];<ref>cf [[E F Schumacher]],''[[Small Is Beautiful]]'', Pt 1, ch 1. Mike Beggs, "Zombie Marx and Modern Economics, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Forget the Transformation Problem." ''Journal of Australian Political Economy'', issue 70, Summer 2012/13, p. 16 [http://australianpe.wix.com/japehome#!current/c1cok] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160701201642/http://australianpe.wix.com/japehome#!current/c1cok|date=July 1, 2016}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mongiovi |first1=Gary |title=Vulgar economy in Marxian garb: a critique of Temporal Single System Marxism |journal=Review of Radical Political Economics |date=September 2002 |volume=34 |issue=4 |pages=393–416 |doi=10.1016/S0486-6134(02)00176-6 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Beggs |first1=Mike |title=Zombie Marx and modern economics, or how i learned to stop worrying and forget the transformation problem |journal=The Journal of Australian Political Economy |date=8 November 2020 |issue=70 |pages=11–24 |id={{Gale|A318902338}} {{ProQuest|1274649717}} |url=https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/INFORMIT.042280767799732 }}</ref> Marx opposed "ascribing a supernatural creative power to labor", arguing as such:
<blockquote>Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much a source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which is itself only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power.<ref name="Critique of the Gotha Program">{{cite book |chapter-url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm |title=[[Critique of the Gotha Program]] |chapter=1 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]] |first=Karl |last=Marx |author-link=Karl Marx |date=1875}}</ref></blockquote>

Here, Marx was distinguishing between [[exchange value]] (the subject of the LTV) and [[use value]]. Marx used the concept of "[[socially necessary labor time]]" to introduce a social perspective distinct from his predecessors and [[neoclassical economics]]. Whereas most economists start with the individual's perspective, Marx started with the perspective of society ''as a whole''. "Social production" involves a complicated and interconnected [[division of labor]] of a wide variety of people who depend on each other for their survival and prosperity. [[Abstract labor and concrete labor|"Abstract" labor]] refers to a characteristic of [[commodity]]-producing labor that is shared by all different kinds of heterogeneous (concrete) types of labor. That is, the concept abstracts from the ''particular'' characteristics of all of the labor and is akin to average labor.

"Socially necessary" labor refers to the quantity required to produce a commodity "in a given state of society, under certain social average conditions or production, with a given social average intensity, and average skill of the labor employed."<ref name="marxprofit" /> That is, the value of a product is determined more by societal standards than by individual conditions. This explains why technological breakthroughs lower the price of commodities and put less advanced producers out of business. Finally, it is not labor per se that creates value, but labor power sold by free wage workers to capitalists. Another distinction is between [[productive and unproductive labor]]. Only wage workers of productive sectors of the economy produce value.<ref group=note>For the difference between wage workers and working animals or [[slave]]s confer: John R. Bell: Capitalism and the Dialectic – The Uno-Sekine Approach to Marxian Political Economy, p. 45. London, Pluto Press 2009</ref> According to Marx an increase in productiveness of the laborer does not affect the value of a commodity, but rather, increases the surplus value realized by the capitalist.<ref>If therefore, the capitalist who applies the new method, sells his commodity at its social value of one shilling, he sells it for threepence above its individual value, and thus realises an extra surplus-value of threepence. On the other hand, the working day of 12 hours is, as regards him, now represented by 24 articles instead of 12. Hence, in order to get rid of the product of one working day, the demand must be double what it was, i.e., the market must become twice as extensive. (Marx et al., 1974)</ref> Therefore, decreasing the cost of production does not decrease the value of a commodity, but allows the capitalist to produce more and increases the opportunity to earn a greater profit or surplus value, as long as there is demand for the additional units of production.

== Criticism of the Marxist labor theory of value ==
{{main article|Criticisms of the labour theory of value}}
The Marxist labor theory of value has been criticized on several counts. Some argue that it predicts that profits will be higher in labor-intensive industries than in capital-intensive industries, which would be contradicted by measured empirical data inherent in quantitative analysis. This is sometimes referred to as the "Great Contradiction".<ref name="ReferenceA">Böhm von Bawerk, "Karl Marx and the Close of His System" [[Karl Marx and the Close of His System]]</ref> In volume 3 of ''Capital'', Marx explains why profits are not distributed according to which industries are the most labor-intensive and why this is consistent with his theory. Whether or not this is consistent with the labor theory of value as presented in volume 1 has been a topic of debate.<ref name="ReferenceA"/> According to Marx, [[surplus value]] is extracted by the capitalist class as a whole and then distributed according to the amount of total capital, not just the variable component. In the example given earlier, of making a cup of coffee, the constant capital involved in production is the coffee beans themselves, and the variable capital is the value added by the coffee maker. The value added by the coffee maker is dependent on its technological capabilities, and the coffee maker can only add so much total value to cups of coffee over its lifespan. The amount of value added to the product is thus the amortization of the value of the coffeemaker. We can also note that not all products have equal proportions of value added by amortized capital. Capital intensive industries such as finance may have a large contribution of capital, while labor-intensive industries like traditional agriculture would have a relatively small one.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ekelund |first1=Robert B. Jr.|first2=Robert F. |last2=Hebert |date=1997 |edition=4th |title=A History of Economic Theory and Method |pages=239–241}}</ref> Critics argue that this turns the LTV into a macroeconomic theory, when it was supposed to explain the exchange ratios of individual commodities in terms of their relation to their labor ratios (making it a microeconomic theory), yet Marx was now maintaining that these ratios must diverge from their labor ratios. Critics thus held that Marx's proposed solution to the "great contradiction" was not so much a solution as it was sidestepping the issue.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Temkin |first=Gabriel |date=1998 |title=Karl Marx and the economics of communism: anniversary recollections |journal=[[Communist and Post-Communist Studies]] |volume=31 |pages=303–328 (321–322) |doi=10.1016/S0967-067X(98)00014-2 |number=4}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Sesardić |first=Neven |title=Marxian Utopia |date=1985 |publisher=Centre for Research into Communist Economies |isbn=0948027010 |pages=14–15}}</ref>

Steve Keen argues that Marx's idea that only labor can produce value rests on the idea that as capital depreciates over its use, then this is transferring its exchange-value to the product. Keen argues that it is not clear why the value of the machine should depreciate at the same rate it is lost. Keen uses an analogy with labor: If workers receive a subsistence wage and the working day exhausts the capacity to labor, it could be argued that the worker has "depreciated" by the amount equivalent to the subsistence wage. However this depreciation is not the limit of value a worker can add in a day (indeed this is critical to Marx's idea that labor is fundamentally exploited). If it were, then the production of a surplus would be impossible. According to Keen, a machine could have a use-value greater than its exchange-value, meaning it could, along with labor, be a source of surplus. Keen claims that Marx almost reached such a conclusion in the ''[[Grundrisse]]'' but never developed it any further. Keen further observes that while Marx insisted that the contribution of machines to production is solely their use-value and not their exchange-value, he routinely treated the use-value and exchange-value of a machine as identical, despite the fact that this would contradict his claim that the two were unrelated.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Steve |last=Keen |url=https://keenomics.s3.amazonaws.com/debtdeflation_media/papers/Jhet_use.PDF |title=Use-Value, Exchange Value, and the Demise of Marx's Labor Theory of Value |journal=[[Journal of the History of Economic Thought]] |volume=15 |number=1 |date=Spring 1993 |pages=107–121|doi=10.1017/S1053837200005290 |s2cid=18950248 }}</ref> Marxists respond by arguing that use-value and exchange-value are incommensurable magnitudes; to claim that a machine can add "more use-value" than it is worth in value-terms is a [[category error]]. According to Marx, a machine by definition cannot be a source of ''human'' labor.<ref>{{cite book |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |title=Capital |volume=I |page=141 |edition=Penguin}}</ref><ref>{{cite magazine |last=D'Arcy |first=Jim |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/darcy-jim/1974/socecon4machines.htm |title=Socialist Economics 4: Do Machines Produce Surplus Value? |magazine=Socialist Standard |date=1974 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}}</ref> Keen responds by arguing that the labor theory of value only works if the use-value and exchange-value of a machine are identical, as Marx argued that machines cannot create surplus value since as their use-value depreciates along with their exchange-value; they simply transfer it to the new product but create no new value in the process.<ref>{{cite book |last=Keen |first=Steve |title=Debunking Economics |publisher=[[Zed Books]] |date=2011 |pages=436–438 |isbn=978-1848139923}}</ref> Keen's machinery argument can also be applied to [[slavery]] based modes of production, which also profit from extracting more use value from the laborers than they return to laborers.<ref>{{cite book |last=Kara |first=Siddharth |date=2008 |title=Sex Trafficking – Inside the Business of Modern Slavery |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |isbn=978-0-231-13960-1}} {{page?|date=July 2024}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states/|title=Slavery in the United States |website=eh.net |access-date=30 January 2020 |archive-url= |archive-date=}}</ref>

In their work ''[[Capital as Power]]'', Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan argue that while Marxists have claimed to produce empirical evidence of the labor theory of value via numerous studies which show consistent correlations between values and prices, these studies<ref group=note>Examples of such studies include: Wolff, Edward N. 1975. "The Rate of Surplus Value in Puerto Rico". ''[[Journal of Political Economy]]'' 83 (5, October): 935–950. Ochoa, E. 1989. "Values, Prices and Wage-Profit Curves in the U.S. Economy". ''Cambridge Journal of Economics'' 13 (3, September): 413–430. Freeman, Alan. 1998. "The Transformation of Prices into Values: Comments on the Chapters by Simon Mohum and Anwar M. Shaikh". In Marxian Economics. A Reappraisal. Volume 2: Essays on Volume III of Capital: Profit, Prices and Dynamics, edited by R. Bellofiore. London: Mcmillan, pp. 270–275. Cockshott, Paul, and Allin Cottrell. 2005. "Robust Correlations Between Prices and Labour Values: A Comment". ''[[Cambridge Journal of Economics]]'' 29 (2, March): 309–316.</ref> do not actually provide evidence for it and are inadequate. According to the authors, these studies attempt to prove the LTV by showing that there is a positive correlation between market prices and labor values. However, the authors argue that these studies measure prices by looking at the price of total output (the unit price of a commodity multiplied by its total quantity) and do these for several sectors of the economy, estimate their total price and value from official statistics and measured for several years. However, Bichler and Nitzan argue that this method has statistical implications as correlations measured this way also reflect the co-variations of the associated quantities of unit values and prices. This means that the unit price and unit value of each sector are multiplied by the same value, which means that the greater the variability of output across different sectors, the tighter the correlation. This means that the overall correlation is substantially larger than the underlying correlation between unit values and unit prices; when sectors are controlled for their size, the correlations often drop to insignificant levels.<ref name="bnarchives.yorku.ca">Cockshott, Paul, Shimshon Bichler, and Jonathan Nitzan. [http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/308/2/20101200_cockshott_nitzan_bichler_testing_the_ltv_exchange_web.htm "Testing the labour theory of value: An exchange."] (2010): 1-15.</ref><ref name="Nitzan, Jonathan 2009, pp.93-97">Nitzan, Jonathan, and Shimshon Bichler. [http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/2/20090522_nb_casp_full_indexed.pdf ''Capital as power: A study of order and creorder'']. Routledge, 2009, pp. 93–97, 138–144</ref> Furthermore, the authors argue that the studies do not seem to actually attempt to measure the correlation between value and price. The authors argue that, according to Marx, the value of a commodity indicates the abstract labor time required for its production; however Marxists have been unable to identify a way to measure a unit (elementary particle) of abstract labor (indeed the authors argue that most have given up and little progress has been made beyond Marx's original work) due to numerous difficulties. This means assumptions must be made and according to the authors, these involve [[circular reasoning]]:<ref name="bnarchives.yorku.ca"/><ref name="Nitzan, Jonathan 2009, pp.93-97"/>
{{Blockquote|The most important of these assumptions are that the value of labour power is proportionate to the actual wage rate, that the ratio of variable capital to surplus value is given by the price ratio of wages to profit, and occasionally also that the value of the depreciated constant capital is equal to a fraction of the capital’s money price. In other words, the researcher assumes precisely what the labour theory of value is supposed to ''demonstrate''.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nitzan |first1=Jonathan |last2=Bichler |first2=Shimshon |url=http://bnarchives.yorku.ca/259/2/20090522_nb_casp_full_indexed.pdf |title=Capital as power: A study of order and reorder |publisher=[[Routledge]] |date=2009 |page=96 |archive-url= |archive-date=}}</ref>
}}
Bichler and Nitzan argue that this amounts to converting prices into values and then determining if they correlate, which the authors argue proves nothing since the studies are simply correlating prices with themselves.<ref name="bnarchives.yorku.ca"/><ref name="Nitzan, Jonathan 2009, pp.93-97"/> [[Paul Cockshott]] disagreed with Bichler and Nitzan's arguments, arguing that it was possible to measure abstract labor time using wage bills and data on working hours, while also arguing Bichler and Nitzan's claims that the true value-price correlations should be much lower actually relied on poor statistical analysis itself.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cockshott |first1=Paul |last2=Cottrell |first2=Allin |last3=Valle Baeza |first3=Alejandro |title=The Empirics of the Labour Theory of Value: Reply to Nitzan and Bichler |journal=Investigación Económica |date=2014 |volume=LXXIII |issue=287 |pages=115–134 |hdl=10419/157802 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> Most Marxists, however, reject Bichler and Nitzan's interpretation of Marx, arguing that their assertion that individual commodities can have values, rather than prices of production, misunderstands Marx's work.<ref>Hansen, Bue Rübner. "Review of ''Capital as Power'', p. 151. "For Nitzan and Bichler, the concept 'abstract labour' is materialist in a way most Marxists
would consider vulgar, and a positive concept that can be understood in isolation from
monetary relation".</ref> For example, [[Fred Moseley (economist)|Fred Moseley]] argues Marx understood "value" to be a "macro-monetary" variable (the total amount of labor added in a given year plus the depreciation of fixed capital in that year), which is then concretized at the level of individual [[prices of production]], meaning that "individual values" of commodities do not exist.<ref>{{cite book |doi=10.1163/9789004301931 |date=2016 |isbn=978-90-04-30193-1 |last1=Moseley |first1=Fred |title=Money and Totality |publisher=BRILL }}{{pn|date=March 2025}}</ref>

The theory can also be sometimes found in non-Marxist traditions.<ref group=note>Confer: {{cite journal |last1=von Weizsäcker |first1=Carl Christian |title=A New Technical Progress Function (1962) |journal=German Economic Review |date=August 2010 |volume=11 |issue=3 |pages=248–265 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-0475.2010.00512.x }}; {{cite journal |last1=Weizsäcker |first1=C. C. |last2=Samuelson |first2=P. A. |title=A new labor theory of value for rational planning through use of the bourgeois profit rate |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America |date=June 1971 |volume=68 |issue=6 |pages=1192–1194 |doi=10.1073/pnas.68.6.1192 |doi-access=free |pmid=16591926 |pmc=389151 }}</ref> For instance, [[Mutualism (economic theory)|mutualist]] theorist [[Kevin Carson]]'s ''[[Studies in Mutualist Political Economy]]'' opens with an attempt to integrate [[marginalist]] critiques into the labor theory of value.<ref>{{cite book |first=Kevin A. |last=Carson |author-link=Kevin Carson |url=http://www.mutualist.org/id112.html |title=Studies in Mutualist Political Economy |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110415135834/http://www.mutualist.org/id112.html |archive-date=15 April 2011 |chapter=1–3}}</ref>

Additionally, economist [[Joseph Schumpeter]] pointed out a couple of issues he believed undermined the validity of the labor theory of value. Firstly he wrote that labor theory of value failed to take into account the intrinsic differences in labor quality between individuals (a difference that, he believed, could not be properly encapsulated through the use of a value multiplier). Furthermore, he claims that labor theory of value, both in its Marxist and Ricardian formulations, would entail that labor be the sole input in an economy alongside all labor being homogenous in nature, a thesis which Schumpeter dismisses as unrealistic and one that could be resolved by Marginalism anyway. Schumpeter goes on to divert his attention towards the supposed self-contradictory nature of how labor theory of value allows for the justification of the Marxian exploitation thesis, highlighting that labor itself could not be valued since it was not itself produced by any labor and that the accumulation of surplus value described by Marx could not occur in a static, perfectly competitive market. Thus, although giving Marx the credit for seeing the need for change inherent in capitalist markets, Schumpeter nonetheless concludes that labor theory of value and its consequences remain problematic theories.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Schumpeter |first1=Joseph |title=Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy |date=1949 |publisher=Harper Perennial Modern Thought |pages=24–30 |edition=Third}}</ref>

Some [[post-Keynesian]] economists have been highly critical of the labor theory of value. [[Joan Robinson]], who herself was considered an expert on the writings of Karl Marx,<ref>{{Cite web|title=Joan Robinson|url=https://spartacus-educational.com/Joan_Robinson.htm|access-date=2020-07-01|website=Spartacus Educational}}</ref> wrote that the labor theory of value was largely a tautology and "a typical example of the way metaphysical ideas operate".<ref>Joan Robinson, "Economic Philosophy" p. 39</ref>

In [[ecological economics]], the labor theory of value has been criticized, where it is argued that labor is in fact energy over time.<ref>Anson Rabinbach, "[https://books.google.com/books?id=e5ZBNv-zTlQC&dq=Rabinbach,+A.,+1990.+The+Human+Motor:+Energy,+Fatigue+and+the+Origins+of+Modernity.+Basic+Books,+New+York.&pg=PR11 The human motor: Energy, fatigue, and the origins of modernity]"</ref> Such arguments generally fail to recognize that Marx is inquiring into social relations among human beings, which cannot be reduced to the expenditure of energy, just as democracy cannot be reduced to the expenditure of energy that a voter makes in getting to the polling place.<ref>Rubin, Isaak Illich ''Essays on Marx's Theory of Value'', Ch. 14</ref> However, echoing Joan Robinson, Alf Hornborg, an environmental historian, argues that both the reliance on "energy theory of value" and "labor theory of value" are problematic as they propose that use-values (or material wealth) are more "real" than exchange-values (or cultural wealth)—yet, use-values are culturally determined.<ref>Jean Baudrillard, "[http://www.gumilla.org/biblioteca/bases/biblo/texto/COM19751_23-25.pdf Pour une critique de l'économie politique du signe] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304054808/http://www.gumilla.org/biblioteca/bases/biblo/texto/COM19751_23-25.pdf |date=March 4, 2016 }}"</ref> For Hornborg, any Marxist argument that claims uneven wealth is due to the "exploitation" or "underpayment" of use-values is actually a tautological contradiction, since it must necessarily quantify "underpayment" in terms of exchange-value. The alternative would be to conceptualize unequal exchange as "an asymmetric net transfer of material inputs in production (e.g., embodied labor, energy, land, and water), rather than in terms of an underpayment of material inputs or an asymmetric transfer of 'value'".<ref name="sciencedirect.com">{{cite journal|title=Ecological economics, Marxism, and technological progress: Some explorations of the conceptual foundations of theories of ecologically unequal exchange|journal=Ecological Economics|volume=105|pages=11–18|doi=10.1016/j.ecolecon.2014.05.015|year=2014|last1=Hornborg|first1=Alf|bibcode=2014EcoEc.105...11H }}</ref> In other words, uneven exchange is characterized by incommensurability, namely: the unequal transfer of material inputs; competing value-judgements of the worth of labor, fuel, and raw materials; differing availability of industrial technologies; and the off-loading of environmental burdens on those with less resources.<ref name="sciencedirect.com"/><ref>{{cite journal|title=Weak comparability of values as a foundation for ecological economics|journal=Ecological Economics|volume=26|issue=3|pages=277–286|doi=10.1016/S0921-8009(97)00120-1|year=1998|last1=Martinez-Alier|first1=Joan|last2=Munda|first2=Giuseppe|last3=O'Neill|first3=John|bibcode=1998EcoEc..26..277M }}</ref>

=== Analytical Marxism ===
{{main article|Analytical Marxism}}
Meanwhile, [[analytical Marxists]] argued that the core concepts of Marxian economics could be explained logically without relying on the labor theory of value.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Cohen |first=G. A. |date=12 March 2017 |orig-date=1981 |title=The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation |url=https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/3128-the-labour-theory-of-value-and-the-concept-of-exploitation |website=Verso |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230419113837/https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/3128-the-labour-theory-of-value-and-the-concept-of-exploitation |archive-date=19 April 2023 |language=en |access-date=5 March 2025 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=Roemer>Roemer, John. (1985). Should marxists be interested in exploitation? Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1):30-65.</ref> In the process of reinterpreting the key concepts of Marxian economics, they tend to apply theoretical frameworks from modern social sciences, such as neoclassical economics and [[game theory]] or [[rational choice theory]], instead of the labor theory of value.<ref name=Roemer></ref><ref name="Farmelant2009">{{cite magazine |last=Farmelant |first=James |date=8 August 2009 |title=G. A. Cohen, 1941-2009 |url=https://mronline.org/2009/08/08/g-a-cohen-1941-2009/ |magazine=Monthly Review |issn=0027-0520 |oclc=241373379 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250327105113/https://mronline.org/2009/08/08/g-a-cohen-1941-2009/ |archive-date=27 March 2025 |access-date=13 July 2025 |url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Analytical Marxism |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marxism-analytical |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |date=September 5, 2022 |access-date=April 10, 2025}}</ref>

==See also==
{{Portal|Business and economics}}
{{cols|colwidth=18em}}
* [[Abstract labour and concrete labour|Abstract labor and concrete labor]]
* [[Cost the limit of price]]
* [[Division of labor]]
* [[Labor notes (currency)]]
* [[Law of value]]
* [[Prices of production]]
* [[Producerism]]
* [[Productive and unproductive labour|Productive and unproductive labor]]
* [[Social division of labor]]
* [[Surplus labour|Surplus labor]]
* [[Surplus product]]
* [[Surplus value]]
* [[Transformation problem]]
* [[Value-form]]
* [[Anarchy of Production]]
{{colend}}

'''Competing theories'''
* [[Anarcho-communism]]
* [[Entitlement theory]]
* [[Marginalism]]
* [[Neo-Ricardianism]]
* [[Subjective theory of value]]

== Notes ==
{{Reflist|group=note}}<!-- Notes should be used to explain concepts, ideas, remarks and not for references. -->

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== Further reading ==
* {{cite journal |last1=Bhaduri |first1=Amit |title=On the Significance of Recent Controversies on Capital Theory: A Marxian View |journal=The Economic Journal |date=1969 |volume=79 |issue=315 |pages=532–539 |doi=10.2307/2230380 |jstor=2230380 }}
* [[Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk|von Böhm-Bawerk, Eugen]] ''Karl Marx and the Close of His System'' (Classic criticism of Marxist economic theory).
* [[G.A. Cohen]] 'The Labour Theory of Value and the Concept of Exploitation', in his ''History Labour and Freedom''.
* Duncan, Colin A.M. 1996. ''The Centrality of Agriculture: Between Humankind and The Rest of Nature.'' McGill–Queen's University Press, Montreal.
* ——2000. The Centrality of Agriculture: History, Ecology and Feasible Socialism. Socialist Register, pp.&nbsp;187–205.
* ——2004. Adam Smith's green vision and the future of global socialism. In Albritton, R; Shannon Bell; John R. Bell; and R. Westra [Eds.] ''New Socialisms: Futures Beyond Globalization. ''New York/London, Routledge. pp.&nbsp;90–104.
* {{cite journal |last1=Dussel |first1=Enrique |title=The Four Drafts of Capital: Toward a New Interpretation of the Dialectical Thought of Marx |journal=Rethinking Marxism |date=March 2001 |volume=13 |issue=1 |pages=10–26 |doi=10.1080/089356901101241569 }}
* Eldred, Michael (1984). [http://www.arte-fact.org/ccfbdspf.html ''Critique of Competitive Freedom and the Bourgeois-Democratic State: Outline of a Form-analytic Extension of Marx's Uncompleted System'']. With an Appendix 'Value-form Analytic Reconstruction of the Capital-Analysis' by Michael Eldred, Marnie Hanlon, Lucia Kleiber and Mike Roth, Kurasje, Copenhagen. Emended, digitized edition 2010 with a new Preface, lxxiii + 466 pp.&nbsp;{{ISBN|87-87437-40-6|978-87-87437-40-0}}.
* Ellerman, David P. (1992) Property & Contract in Economics: The Case for Economic Democracy. Blackwell. Chapters 4, 5, and 13 critiques of LTV in favor of the labor theory of property.
* Engels, F. (1880). [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/ ''Socialism: Utopian and Scientific''].
* Freeman, Alan: ''Price, value and profit – a continuous, general treatment''. In: Alan Freeman, Guglielmo Carchedi (editors): ''Marx and Non-equilibrium Economics''. [[Edward Elgar Publishing]]. Cheltenham, UK, Brookfield, US 1996. {{ISBN|978-1-85898-268-7}}.
* Hagendorf, Klaus: [http://eurodos.chez-alice.fr/docu/econ/hagendorf_labour_theory_of_value_42008.pdf ''The Labour Theory of Value. A Historical-Logical Analysis'']. Paris: EURODOS; 2008.
* Hagendorf, Klaus: [http://ssrn.com/paper=1489383 ''Labour Values and the Theory of the Firm. Part I: The Competitive Firm'']. Paris: EURODOS; 2009.
* Hansen, Bue Rübner. (2011). "Review of ''Capital as Power'' by Jonathan Nitzan and Shimson Bichler". ''Historical Materialism'' 19, no. 2: 144–159.
* Henderson, James M.; Quandt, Richard E. 1971: Microeconomic Theory – A Mathematical Approach. Second Edition/International Student Edition. McGraw-Hill Kogakusha, Ltd.
* Keen, Steven [http://www.debunking-economics.com/Papers/Marx/Keen_Marx_Thesis.pdf ''Use, Value, and Exchange: The Misinterpretation of Marx''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060708153752/http://www.debunking-economics.com/Papers/Marx/Keen_Marx_Thesis.pdf |date=July 8, 2006 }}.
* {{cite book |last=Mason |first=Paul |author-link=Paul Mason (journalist) |title=PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future |year=2015 |publisher=Allen Lane |isbn=978-1-84614-738-8 |title-link=PostCapitalism: A Guide to our Future}}
* {{citation |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |editor-first=Friedrich |editor-last=Engels |editor-link=Friedrich Engels |others=[[Samuel Moore (translator of Das Kapital)|Samuel Moore]] and Edward Aveling |title=Capital |volume=1 |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ |access-date=July 5, 2006 |year=1867 |publisher=Vintage Books |isbn=978-0-394-72657-1 |via=[[Marxists Internet Archive]]}} ([Internet edition: 1999] [1887 English edition]).
* {{citation |last=Marx |first=Karl |author-link=Karl Marx |others=Ben Fowkes |title=Capital: A Critique of Political Economy |title-link=Das Kapital |volume=1 |year=1976 |orig-year=1867 |publisher=[[Penguin Books]]}}
* [[Fred Moseley (economist)|Moseley, Fred]]. (2016). [http://resistir.info/livros/money_and_totality.pdf ''Money and Totality''] Leiden, Netherlands: Brill.
* {{cite book |doi=10.1163/9789004326071 |date=2016 |isbn=978-90-04-32607-1 |last1=Murray |first1=Patrick |title=The Mismeasure of Wealth |publisher=BRILL }}
* Ormazabal, Kepa M. (2004). [http://www.ehu.es/kormazabal/SmithOnLaborValue.pdf ''Smith On Labour Value''] Bilbo, Biscay, Spain: University of the Basque Country Working Paper.
* Parrington, Vernon Louis. [https://web.archive.org/web/20191024162257/http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/Parrington/vol1/bk02_01_ch03.html ''The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin''].
* {{cite book |doi=10.1007/978-94-007-2096-1 |date=2012 |isbn=978-94-007-2095-4 |last1=Pokrovskii |first1=Vladimir N. |title=Econodynamics |series=New Economic Windows |publisher=Springer |location=Dordrecht }}
* [[Isaak Illich Rubin|Rubin, Isaak Illich]] (1928). [https://www.marxists.org/archive/rubin/value/index.htm ''Essays on Marx's Theory of Value'']
* [[Anwar Shaikh (Economist)|Shaikh, Anwar]] (1998). "The Empirical Strength of the Labour Theory of Value" in ''Conference Proceedings of Marxian Economics: A Centenary Appraisal'', Riccardo Bellofiore (ed.), Macmillan, London.
* {{citation|last=Smith|first=Adam|author-link=Adam Smith|title=An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations|url=http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-index.htm|access-date=August 3, 2006|year=1776|isbn=978-1-4043-0998-2|publisher=AdamSmith.org|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927202615/http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-index.htm |archive-date=September 27, 2007}}
* Wolff, Jonathan (2003). [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/#3" ''Karl Marx''] in ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy''.
* {{citation |doi=10.1215/00182702-14-4-564 |last2=Roberts |first2=Bruce B. |last3=Callari |first3=Antonio |author=Wolff |year=1982 |first1=Richard D. |title=Marx's (not Ricardo's) 'Transformation Problem': A Radical Reconceptualization |journal=History of Political Economy |volume=14 |issue=4 |pages=564–582 |postscript=.}}
* {{cite journal |last1=Ugalde |first1=Elliot Goodell |title=In Defense of Marx's Labour Theory of Value: Vancouver's Housing 'Crisis' |journal=Cultural Logic |date=2022 |volume=26 |pages=69–101 |url=https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/clogic/article/view/199490 }}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Labor Theory Of Value}}
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[[Category:Marxian economics]]
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[[Category:Theory of value (economics)]]
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