Socialist Progressives
In reply to the discussion: What does Socialism look like to you? [View all]HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)The labor theory of value has developed over many centuries. It seems clear that there is no one originator of concept, but rather many different thinkers have arrived at the same conclusion independently.
Some writers trace its origin to Thomas Aquinas.[10][11] In his Summa Theologiae (1265-1274) he expresses the view that "... value can, does and should increase in relation to the amount of labor which has been expended in the improvement of commodities".[12] Scholars such as Joseph Schumpeter have cited Ibn Khaldun, who in his Muqaddimah (1377), described labor as the source of value, necessary for all earnings and capital accumulation. ... Scholars have also pointed to Sir William Petty's Treatise of Taxes of 1662[14] and to John Locke's labor theory of property, set out in the Second Treatise on Government (1689), which sees labor as the ultimate source of economic value. Karl Marx himself credited Benjamin Franklin in his 1729 essay entitled "A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency" as being "one of the first" to advance the theory.[15]
Pioneer Scottish economist Adam Smith accepted the theory for pre-capitalist societies but saw a flaw in its application to contemporary capitalism....David Ricardo (seconded by Marx) responded to this paradox by arguing that Smith had confused labor with wages....
Based on the discrepancy between the wages of labor and the value of the product, the "Ricardian socialists" Charles Hall, Thomas Hodgskin, John Gray, and John Francis Bray[17] applied Ricardo's theory to develop theories of exploitation.
Marx expanded on these ideas, arguing that workers work for a part of each day adding the value required to cover their wages, while the remainder of their labor is performed for the enrichment of the capitalist. The LTV and the accompanying theory of exploitation became central to his economic thought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value#Origins_of_the_labor_theory_of_value