Labor Theory of Value vs. Market Value

The so-called complexities of supply and demand are mere distractions from the fundamental truth. As Beer makes plain, it is labor—the exertion of human energy—that imbues a commodity with value. To claim that subjective preferences somehow supersede this is to ignore the exploitation inherent in the capitalist system, where the worker is robbed of the surplus value he creates. It is not preference, but the socially necessary labor-time that dictates value.

I find it amusing that you two fixate on labor as the font of all value. As intellectuals, are we to be swayed by such base materialism? The spirit, the idea, is what truly elevates and shapes the world. Labor is merely the tool by which the idea manifests. The masses will, of course, cling to such notions; it is all they have.

Indeed, as Marx notes, it is vital to ground our understanding of value in the realities of production. While the bourgeois economists obfuscate the matter with their equations of supply and demand, we must always return to the simple fact that without labor, nothing is produced, and therefore nothing has value. It is the worker who is the true creator, and yet it is the capitalist who reaps the rewards.