Marx's Labour Theory of Value is Superior to Subjective Value Theory

Let’s get to it! Price Marx is, indeed, primarily focussed on explaining natural prices; the reason for this is that, for Marx, natural prices are values. Where market prices which deviate from natural prices predominate, it it because the market has not yet disciplined producers into producing at the socially necessary labour time (as in 'undercutting'). Since my mandate is to show that Marx’s LTV is the only valid theory of values, this does not automatically constitute a weakness in my argument.However, I think I have also shown how Marx's value theory contributes to a theory of market prices which, in forever tending to decrease, respond dynamically to the necessity for competing producers to lower their individual labour times to beneath, or in line with, socially necessary labour times. The constant undercutting that this entails means that market prices are always 'one step ahead' of values, the former decreasing at an uneven but faster rate than the latter. Use-value, Exchange-value and ValueA use-value, for Marx, is synonymous with its utility: 'The utility of a thing makes it a use value'. However, 'this utility is not a thing of air'. What Marx means by this is not that use-values are material properties, but only that a thing cannot have a use-value independently of its properties - the properties, which exist objectively, are what people subjectively find useful. Con states that my view entails that the ad company's efforts did not really increase use-value, since 'a diamond is forever' has nothing to do with the physical qualities of diamonds. But use-value is always an interaction between physical properties and subjective attitudes - change either and you change use-values. While there are subjective, historical conditions that had to be fulfilled in order for the ad to work (like love-relationships being idealised as eternal), the same strategy would not have worked if diamonds were not durable, shiny, wearable and so on - 'a carrot is forever' would not have had the same effect partly because carrots really do decompose. It is absolutely not the case that Marx's view entails that the ad campaign increased the value of diamonds, since Marx strictly delineates between use-values and values, and would definitely not conflate the two as Con does.In his discussion of use-value, Con states that 'Marx would argue that this car has an exchange value (an intrinsic value based off of the labor that was put into making it), and a use-value (how useful it is)'. The use-value part of this is correct, but Con makes the error of conflating exchange-value with value proper. Exchange value is precisely not 'an intrinsic value' based on labour-times. Exchange value is simply how much of one thing you have to pay to get another. Measured in money terms, exchange-values are market prices, while values correspond to natural prices. This is a vital distinction.Let's look at Con's car example. Con argues that, even though the buyer and seller are exchanging equal exchange-values, which is true from the Marxian perspective, the buyer is nevertheless receiving a surplus of what Con calls 'value'. Well, from Marx's persepctive, whether or not this is true will be based on the average labour times used to produce both commodites (on the one hand, a car, on the other, the gold that backs the money-commodity). But Con argues that the seller comes out on top by virtue of the fact that he recieves not only the exchange value of the car, but also its use-value. This is a serious confusion of different value-forms. Firstly, even if we were to make the error of comparing use-values as a measure of value proper, the seller is recieving a presumably equal amount of use-value (let's call it subjective value) to the buyer, since he is gaining the considerable use-value of money (to buy things). In reality, though, neither party is recieving a surplus of what Marx calls value (unless the average labour times of both commodities could be known and compared). Exploitation So, Con is correct to say that labour-power is a commodity, and that the capitalist purchases this commodity from the worker. It is also true to say that labour-power exchanges at its value - the wage of the worker is equal to the value of his labour-power. The price of labour-power is determined by, like everything else, the cost of the reproduction of the commodity (labour-power), measured in labour-time. This means that the price of labour-power (wages) will tend towards the same value as the bundle of commodites (food, clothing, shelter) required to reproduce the worker and thus his labour-power. Profit, or surplus-value, is the difference between the price received from the selling of the commodity, and the price of wages and raw materials. This means that labour is unique as a commodity, in that it can produce more value than it is worth, as Con rightly points out. The extraction of this surplus from the worker is exploitation.Let's take a look at Con's claim regarding use-value, price and exploitation: 'use-value isn’t just a prerequisite for something to be sold, it’s the very reason natural prices deviate from market prices. If everything were sold at its natural price, no one would get anything but an equal transaction (somewhat of an ideal as described by Marx4). Profits wouldn't exist.' Marx never holds anything but that things actually do sell at their values, or at least close to them (as I explained in previous rounds). The only 'discrepency', that is, the only inequality, is in the remuneration of the worker relative to the value he produces. But this inequality goes on largely independently of the distinction between market prices (exchange-values) and natural prices (values). What 'rates' of exploitation determine are simply rates of surplus-extraction, of the drawing of surplus value from the worker above and beyond what is returned to him in wages. The constant race to exploit workers as much as possible by capitalists (due to the pressure of competition), usually by improving technology and technical efficiency, progressively lowers values, since it reduces the amount of labour-time required, on average, to produce a given commodity. So, what exploitation affects is the deviation between the value produced by the worker and the value of his wages.It does not affect the deviation between market prices and values. What Con is trying to show, of course, is that profits must come from somewhere. If things are sold at their values, that is, if values closely regulate prices (as Marx holds), then how are profits produced? Con seems to be implying that profits are accounted for by the difference between market prices and natural prices, which would imply the centrality of subjective values (use-values) in producing profits. But Marx accounts for profits not in the sphere of exchange, but in the sphere of production, by the process of the exploitation of labour. Thus it does not hold that use-values, or subjective values, account for differences between market and natural prices, nor for profits. The differences between market and natural prices are, for Marx, a temporary but necessary part of the process of the market disciplining prices to fall in line with average labour-times. Profits emerge through exploitation. The only necessary role for use-values in either of these processes consists in enabling the realisation of value through sale. SummaryCon states that the current state of academic literature weighs against the Marxian position; it is certainly true that most economists working today are not Marxists, and do not agree with Marx's position. Aside from the possible ideological background to this mainstream attitude, an appeal to general academic opinion does not, in itself constitute a critique. There are many economists who do agree with Marx's basic principles, such as Richard Wolff, Yanis Varoufakis and Andrew Kliman. I feel that Con will need to actually express some of the ideas held by the thinkers he is referencing in order for them to be valid in this debate. Con claims that I have not offered a critique of subjective value theory. I think I have demonstrated in considerable detail why use-values or subjective values do not determine what I have throughout this debate referred to as value (socially necessary labour times), and that values themselves are the material core around which market prices closely orbit. It is my view that subjective value theory seeks to obfuscate the central role of labour in the production of social wealth by abstracting the very concept of wealth away from the material process of production and into people's heads. The ideological motive for this is clear: social wealth is created privately, in the minds of individuals. There can thus be no such thing as exploitation, since all exchanges are voluntarily entered into; capitalism is thus the most effective way of increasing social wealth, since it affords everyone the highest degree of freedom in pursuing the increase of their own wealth (subjective values or use-values) via exchange. With the concept of value reduced to use-value/subjective-value, all things are permitted in the realm of exchange, and the concrete social relations underpinning the productive process are abstracted away. Marx's insistence on the existence of a form of value which is objective reveals these processes at work; it is therefore the Marxian position which really does the work of looking at the 'bigger picture', since it looks for the driving forces of human economic activity in the sphere of production as well as in the sphere of exchange. Subjective value theory, glancing only briefly at production, finds there only the material expression of consumer's different subjective attitudes, and thus fails to account for the objective character of global capital, its expansion and dynamics.I very much look forward to Con's final remarks and thank him/her for a fantastic debate!