Replies

so every object that takes the same amount of labor to make is equally valuable under marxism. Gee why didn't that work.

Not quite accurate.
More like equal amounts of effort.

If two assemblers build two identical Chevies, and one builds his to Rolls Royce Standards in a week, and the other takes a month to meet Yugo standards, both must be considered equal, at least, or the Yugo must be sold for the price of a Rolls... since they were both intended to have value proportional to the effort expended..."

Remember the bread lines in the Soviet Union? Generations of them.
How hard is it to make bread?

Adam Smith found economic value - which he called "natural price"- by adding the costs of production. In a society without private ownership of land and which used only the simplest of tools, labour would make up the entire cost of production.

"How hard is it to make bread?" - Not too hard. But how hard was it to harvest grain without big losses, then store the harvest so that much of it did not rot, then transport without a lot of it being blown away by the wind, and finally process it? Baking itself was the least of the difficulties.

For some reason, some people insist on pursuing points made in the open forum in private email.
I don't.
This remark was PM'd to me and I neglected to make a note of the sender before I blew it away...

Implicit in my original remark (assuming readers here all have a minimal grasp of the differences between state control vs. private property) is the underlying failure of collectivist production of anything, vs the invisible hand of self interest.

When all the means of production (aside from labor) are driven by selfish interests, none of those negative influences are allowed to occur.