AFAIK, when economists want to truly measure how the price of a good has changed over time, they measure that price in terms of how much time one would have to work in order to purchase it. Matt Ridley does this through (the first 7 chapters that I’ve read of) The Rational Optimist
I’m not super familiar with Marxism, but I thought the key thesis about labor was the labor theory of value—picked up from Adam Smith and John Locke, among others. There are two versions of this theory—one is that the sole determinate of the price of a good (or at least the supply side for more sophisticated Marxists) is the amount of labor that went into it. The other is normative in nature, which says that people should be paid according to the amount of labor they put into their work.
No, that sounds like a good summary to me. I think you probably have an excellent understanding of Marxism. :-)
Measuring how much time it takes to produce a commodity is a fascinating way of exploring history, but note that I’m not trying to measure the value of a product—I’m trying to measure the value of my time. If you commoditize my labor, you might be able to calculate how much it has cost to reproduce my ability to toil in various ages of history, but I’m not trying to measure the value of my time to a capitalist facing a decentralized, bloated labor market—I’m trying to measure the value of my time to me.
As to the single point of time being a useful way to analyze labor, though, well, that’s a much simpler idea, and has not been disproven, and has not received much attention lately.
To mean the labor theory of value point, not the more general point that time is a useful way to think about labor, at least for some things.
AFAIK, when economists want to truly measure how the price of a good has changed over time, they measure that price in terms of how much time one would have to work in order to purchase it. Matt Ridley does this through (the first 7 chapters that I’ve read of) The Rational Optimist
I’m not super familiar with Marxism, but I thought the key thesis about labor was the labor theory of value—picked up from Adam Smith and John Locke, among others. There are two versions of this theory—one is that the sole determinate of the price of a good (or at least the supply side for more sophisticated Marxists) is the amount of labor that went into it. The other is normative in nature, which says that people should be paid according to the amount of labor they put into their work.
Is my understanding of Marxism just wrong?
No, that sounds like a good summary to me. I think you probably have an excellent understanding of Marxism. :-)
Measuring how much time it takes to produce a commodity is a fascinating way of exploring history, but note that I’m not trying to measure the value of a product—I’m trying to measure the value of my time. If you commoditize my labor, you might be able to calculate how much it has cost to reproduce my ability to toil in various ages of history, but I’m not trying to measure the value of my time to a capitalist facing a decentralized, bloated labor market—I’m trying to measure the value of my time to me.
I see now. I took
To mean the labor theory of value point, not the more general point that time is a useful way to think about labor, at least for some things.