this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2026
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Unpopular Opinion

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Leftism is better without Marxist economics (vargar.org)
submitted 6 days ago by wraekscadu@vargar.org to c/unpopularopinion@lemmy.world
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I don't think this is particularly unpopular outside of Lemmy, but still.

I consider myself a leftist primarily because:

  • I want every individual to have maximum possible freedom as long as its existence doesn't reduce the summation of the freedom of all individuals.
  • The current system doesn't do a good enough job at this as it permits power concentration.
  • The policies I believe would help achieve my "want" (the freedom thing) are generally considered "leftist".

Marx for his time, did some quite cool stuff. I really enjoyed his work in sociology. His critique of capitalism had merit.

THAT BEING SAID, labor theory of value is absolute dogshit. FOR THE TIME, sure, ok- nice effort. But TODAY, when marginalism has proven time and time again to be the more superior explanation to value, defending LTV is kinda lame.

I've never met a single professional economist who takes it seriously. Most of its defenders (in my experience) tend to be folks who have no economics background, and frankly aren't willing to have a good faith convo. I'm not trying to bandwagon effect + appeal to authority here, but this is just so reminiscent of anti vaxxers and flat earthers (at least for me).

I won't go into MY reasoning for preferring marginalist economics over LTV economics as there are much much better writeups for this than what I'm capable of. Here's one I could lazily find.

But yeah. In conclusion, I'm of the opinion that it would be much nicer if leftists got rid of Marx from their economics, and instead adopted economic models that better described reality.

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[–] wraekscadu@vargar.org 1 points 5 days ago

Value ≠ price. Agreed.

Marginalism is concerned exclusively with exchange value

Disagree. Imagine I'm on an island. I have a stream with running water. However, every time I need to take a sip, I have to bend down.

The price of taking a sip = bending down once.

The value of taking that sip has diminishing returns. I might be very thirsty. Hence, I would readily take 10 sips. However, with every sip, my thrist reduces. Hence, the value of that additional sip reduces. The price however stays the same (bending down once per sip). Eventually, the value becomes too little for the price. I stop.

LTV's math would tell me that the value of that sip is equal to the amount of labor I put into it. Meaning, its value stays the same and increases over time as bending down repeatedly means more exhaustion, hence more labor. You can't invoke socially necessary labor here either. There's no society. There's just me. Economics is the study of resource distribution. The amount of agents working and wanting is irrelevant.

Marginalism is a circular argument: value is determined by price, price comes from value.

My previous example shows why this is a misunderstanding.

And really, when you look under the hood, the "scarcity" it uses to justify prices is just labor in disguise.

Sometimes, yes (determined by labor costs).

Why do diamonds sell at a higher price than water even though water is more valuable?

Valuable according to whom? Using what math?

Because diamonds are more scarce than water.

No. You also need to specify units of both. How much water? How many diamonds?

Because it takes more labor to locate, extract, and refine diamonds

I spent one hour extracting an ugly diamond. I spent another hour extracting a beautiful diamond. I spent one hour for both. The labor for both was the same. Is the value for both the same?

Because diamonds are more scarce than water.

No. My poop (poop generated only by me, nobody else) is way more scarce than diamonds. Is it priced in the millions? Sadly, no. Scarcity doesn't alone decide both value and price. Value is decided subjectively. I love coffee. I value it highly. My friend hates coffee. She doesn't value it. Price is determined by what needs to be sacrificed to obtain what is valued.