The LTO_V_, used by Marx and the classical political economists, asserts that there an abstract quantity called value that is a feature of commodities, either singly or aggregate (depending on your interpretation)and is proposition to the amount socially necessary [i.e., minimum possible] abstract [i.e., unskilled] labor time involved in their production.
This concept has no moral implications for who is entitled to the products so produced. It is used to explain things like why there are profits after the worker has been paid for the value of his work and even though commodities exchange, in the initial (admittedly idealized) story in Capital at their value. Moreover, Marx emphasizes that the notion of value applies on in an economy based on generalized commodity production. Therefore value would not even exist in a planned economy such as he envisaged.
The LTO_P_, advocated by Locke, Nozick, and many libertarians, is an expressly moral theory that is supposed to explain why people are entitled to property. On this theory, property rights are based on having produced something from something that is either unowned or already owned by you, or by having acquired it by voluntary exchange or gift from someone with a legitimate ownership claim to it already. Marx would regard this notion as pure 100% unadulterated bourgeois ideology. It is totatally unrelated to the LTO_V_.
Many Marxists mistakenly think that the basis of socialism should be that "labor creates all wealth" and is therefore entitled to it. Marx expressly rejects this idea as absurd at the start of Critique of the Gotha Program -- for good reason.
jks
--- Michael Dawson <MDawson at pdx.edu> wrote:
> So you'd throw out the baby with the bathwater?
> Why? Of course, it's only
> human decency that people who can't perform normal
> labor, which is a
> blessing, should be given a comfortable and socially
> meaningful existence.
> But I never claimed the labor theory of value and
> property explains
> everything. It just explains the relationship
> between work and justice.
> You know, just a little, small topic like that...
>
> If you dump the LTOV, where's the injustice in
> capitalist industry? Recall
> that Marx claimed his discovery of the difference
> between labor and
> labor-power was the bedrock of Das Kapital. A good
> Marxist like you surely
> knows that fact.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org
> [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
> > On Behalf Of Yoshie Furuhashi
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2004 10:27 PM
> > To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org; furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
> > Subject: [lbo-talk] plagiarism watch
> >
> > Michael Dawson mdawson at pdx.edu, Wed Dec 22
> 21:28:19 PST 2004:
> > >What claim, then, do "ordinary" workers have to
> wages and a
> > >proportionate say over surpluses?
> >
> > If the labor theory of property were the basis of
> individuals' claim
> > to products of social labor, the disabled, the
> unemployed, those who
> > are too young or too old to work, housewives and
> househusbands, etc.
> > would have little to no claim to them. A
> socialist movement needs a
> > better foundation than that.
> > --
> > Yoshie
> >
> > * Critical Montages:
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> > * "Proud of Britain":
> <http://www.proudofbritain.net/ > and
> > <http://www.proud-of-britain.org.uk/>
> > ___________________________________
> >
>
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