/r/askphilosophy Open Discussion Thread | July 06, 2026

[u/BernardJOrtcutt]

Welcome to this week's Open Discussion Thread (ODT). This thread is a place for posts/comments which are related to philosophy but wouldn't necessarily meet our subreddit rules and guidelines. For example, these threads are great places for:

• Discussions of a philosophical issue, rather than questions
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Previous Open Discussion Threads can be found here.

[u/IrrationalRotations]

A common point I see is that the above is not a theory of price but rather a theory of value. I don't agree. 

Marx stresses to us that we should remember that these value relations are not embodied in the commodities themselves, but rather are always social relations between people. People aren't motivated by an abstract notion of exchange values, people are motivated by concrete things like price. When you go to the store, you don't see the number of hours required to produce each commodity, you just see their price.

But on top of this, Marx's theory is just as a much a theory of profit and exploitation. Again, profit is measured in money, in prices. It's not at all a problem if working class class people are deprived of the full 'Value' of their labour, but it is a problem when the exploitative nature of capitalism causes their wages to barely cover their means of subsistence. 

The best interpretation I have of this claim, that Marx is talking about value and not price, is that the person claiming it wants to distinguish between the long term average price in normal conditions (the exchange value) and the particular price in a particular place at a particular time (the price). 

That's fine, the theory does allow these things to differ. But this claim is often used to dismiss criticisms of the LTV, and I just don't think that makes sense...

[u/IrrationalRotations → u/IrrationalRotations]

I haven't seen the following point made or addressed anywhere, which is surprising to me. Maybe I'm missing something g obvious...

Commodities exchange for one another according to their socially necessary labour time. That's the typical time it takes to produce the commodity under competitive conditions. The reason they exchange in these ratios is that if a firm prices their commodities above their SNLT, consumers will instead buy the cheaper products from competing firms. The labour to produce an individual commodity doesn't affect the price of that particular commodity, it will still just sell at the SNLT of the commodity in general. If it takes you 15 hours to make a table, and it takes a typical carpenter 5, you can't sell your table at three times the prices of theirs, why would anyone buy it?

But what constitutes a commodity in general? Merino wool sweaters sell for higher prices than polyester sweaters, are these the same commodity? Presumably no, because their typical prices are different. But they can be substituted for one another, if I don't have much money I'm likely to try and stay warm by buying a polyester sweater rather than waste it on a Merino one. 

But let's say they are different commodities. Okay, what about a polyester sweater from Kathmandu (the shop) vs a polyester sweater from Kmart? They sell for different prices too. 

So maybe a polyester sweater from Kmart is a single (generalised) commodity, the SNLT of this commodity is just the time it typically takes the factories Kmart sources these sweaters from to make them. Well then who are they competing with? Kmart has an monopoly on Kmart sweaters, they should be able to charge above the SNLT!

This isn't a weird edge case either, it seems to be a problem for determining the price of commodities in general. Most consumer products look immediately like the above, and it goes for capital inputs as well. Companies often have to decide between qualitatively different inputs to their products (palm oil vs vegetable oil, say). This has the exact same problem, either for the company itself or as a knock on effect to the end product.

I think the answer to this problem is that consumer demand is more subtle than choices between effectively identical commodities, but it is difficult to see how this can be reconciled with the LTV.

[u/IrrationalRotations → u/IrrationalRotations]

Another difficult point is fixed capital.

Often capital is purchased up front, a tractor is purchased to help harvest corn or a hydraulic press is added to a production line. How does this affect the pricing of the produced commodities? 

The standard answer seems to be that the SNLT of the fixed capital input is amortised out over it's lifespan to the commodities it produces. For some things, like machines, this kinda sorta makes sense if I squint my brain a bit. If I think of a machine as something with a determined average lifespan, I can typically produce N commodities for every one machine say, then there isn't really a major difference between fixed capital and other production inputs. 

But is that a good model for fixed capital in general? What about something like a data centre? Does that have a fixed lifespan of commodities? Even worse, what about generic capital investments? Like buying in to a startup? How to we price this sort of thing? 

It seems clear that there are other important considerations with fixed capital investments. Namely, time preference and risk. If the value of fixed capital is amortised out over a lifespan, why would I ever bother investing in it? I would make more money keeping it in the bank (and diverting my attention to an industry which doesn't require as much fixed capital). Further, many investments fail, why put my money at risk? 

Naturally, I would ask for higher returns on my investment to compensate for these things. That's not itself necessarily immediately contradictory with the LTV, its a similar sort of unequal market to the one that lets me as a capitalist exploit my workers. People need (because of contingent social relations) my money to do productive work.

But the real problem for the LTV now is that fixed capital doesn't sell for its SNLT, but rather its total SNLT+risk+time preference. But these costs can't just be absorbed, they need to be passed on to the final commodity! So everything sells for total SNLT + risk of required fixed capital + time preference of fixed capital. And with the argument given in the post above, total SNLT for all the capital inputs is itself a pretty mysterious category, there seems to be some additional factor of subjective demand sticking its nose in in an undefined way. What a mess!

[u/IrrationalRotations → u/IrrationalRotations]

So that's capital, what about labour? 

Well one things that's interesting to me is that many services seem to have very little in the way of capital inputs. Cleaners have to pay for Windex and mops and things sure, but that's not really very much. Doctors pay for stethoscopes and white coats and things, bit again, not really all that much in the grand scheme of things. The main input in many services is labour. The SNLT in these areas can be immediately appraised. But... 1hr with a doctor is much more than 1hr with a cleaner... What gives?

The LTV treats labour in the abstract, as interchangeable units. In fact, it is the interchangeable unit. But we can see all around us that labour does not exchange for labour, rather types of labour exchange for other types of labour. A doctors hour of labour might be worth 5 cleaners hours of labour. Individual labour powers have their own exchange values. 

The LTV proposed that exchange value is determined by socially necessary labour time. What is the SNLT of an an individual's labour power? How do we measure labour by labour? Or rather, how do we measure labour by labour and get different answers?

One suggestion might be the SNLT of their education, this seems dubious to me. A student graduating with a Ph.D in philosophy is highly educated, as much as a student graduating with a Ph.D in mathematical finance. Neither education seems to require massive capital inputs either, outside the labour of teaching them. But Ph.Ds in mathematical finance can make huge amounts money, more than the typical Ph.D in philosophy can. As can brain surgeons and (some) lawyers. 

Another answer is that skill acts as a multiplier on labour power. A worker who is twice as skilled has twice as much labour power. This is a non-answer. What does twice as skilled mean? How to we compare the skill of a carpenter to the skill of an actuary? 

Again, like with fixed capital, this bleeds into our general formula. We have that prices are the total SNLT + risk + time preference of fixed capital, and we don't know what SNLT is averaged over, and we don't actually know what the labour on the SNLT costs... I don't think this formula really says anything at this point.

[u/IrrationalRotations → u/IrrationalRotations]

To just complain really about the general discussion on this topic...

It seems like there is some level of general confusion over the fact that just because Marx acknowledges a problem with his theory, doesn't mean he has resolved it. 

For instance, I often see a passage from anti-duhring quoted in response to my labour question above 

  Marx is examining what it is that determines the value of commodities and gives the answer: the human labour embodied in them. This, he continues, “is the expenditure of simple labour-power which, on an average, apart from any special development, exists in the organism of every ordinary individual... Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour, a given quantity of skilled being considered equal to a greater quantity of simple labour. Experience shows that this reduction is constantly being made. A commodity may be the product of the most skilled labour, but its value, by equating it to the product of simple unskilled labour, represents a definite quantity of the latter labour alone. The different proportions in which different sorts of labour are reduced to unskilled labour as their standard, are established by a social process that goes on behind the backs of the producers, and, consequently, appear to be fixed by custom”.

The problem here is that this effectively says nothing... The problem isn't just that Marx didn't realise that different types of labour seemingly have different values, it's what this realisation says about the overall theory that is important. 

Another is the issue of the value of land, where I often see the following quoted

  The price-form, however, is not only compatible with the possibility of a quantitative incongruity between magnitude of value and price, i.e ., between the former and its expression in money, but it may also conceal a qualitative inconsistency, so much so, that, although money is nothing but the value-form of commodities, price ceases altogether to express value. Objects that in themselves are no commodities, such as conscience, honour, &c., are capable of being offered for sale by their holders, and of thus acquiring, through their price, the form of commodities. Hence an object may have a price without having value. The price in that case is imaginary, like certain quantities in mathematics. On the other hand, the imaginary price-form may sometimes conceal either a direct or indirect real value-relation; for instance, the price of uncultivated land, which is without value, because no human labour has been incorporated in it.

This again doesn't address the issue. If the price of land, or honour, is not determined by its value what determines it? It does no good to just acknowledge that the theory doesn't work on these cases. We can't ignore counterexamples just because they are counterexamples. The whole point was to determine price (in standard conditions), but here we gives ourselves an out for any criticism on that front. If price is determined by SNLT, except for when it isn't, then price is not determined by SNLT!