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Criticisms of the labor theory of value often arise from an economic criticism of Marxism. ==Microeconomic theory== Adherents of neoclassical economics, the currently predominant school, employ the theory of marginalism, which holds that the value of any good or service is determined by its marginal utility, the utility of the "last" bought consumption good measured by its price, in satisfying a specific consumer's wants. While Marx emphasises profit maximisation, neoclassical economists view the maximisation of utility at the individual or societal level〔Whether the aggregation of utility functions of individuals to utility functions of whole societies is possible, is disputed.〕 as the driving force of the economy. Proponents of the labor theory of value (LTV) would reply that as capitalism only recognises demand backed by money—the price of a good is not simply measured by its usefulness but by the amount of money consumers own. It depends on a pre-existing set of relations of distribution. These relations of distribution in turn rest on a set of relations of production, which determine how consumers "earn" money, capitalists "earn" profits, workers wages, landlords rent, and so on. Consequently, the price of an object depends not only on its usefulness but on the amount of money different consumers have - their different effective demands. It is unclear how if at all this differs from a wealth effect on demand that results directly from the individual's utility maximization problem. In microeconomics, this utility maximisation takes place under certain constraints, these are the available amounts of factors of production, for instance, labor (as with Marx profit maximisation takes place under the constraint of available production techniques and the wage rate).〔Details are explained by microeconomics, for a text book see Henderson, Quandt 1971.〕 In fact, the ultimate restriction is time. Households divide their time (24 hours a day) into leisure time and time for work. Time for work is to make money to buy goods for consumption. The household chooses that amount of leisure time and (via working time) that amount of consumption goods that maximises its utility level. With Marx, working time is not based on a free decision of households, but the outcome of a class struggle between workers and capitalists, the former trying to decrease, the latter to increase working time. Further, all this does not take account of effects of the accumulation process. With Marx, there is a tendency of equalisation of rates of profit in the accumulation process, which leads to prices of production. If the price of a commodity is above its price of production, then capitalists in that sector earn a super profit (a rate of profit above the average rate of profit of the economy as a whole). As a result, capital is attracted to that sector, production increases, and prices fall until the super profit has been competed away. The resulting prices of production are via transformation from labor values into prices based on labor times. According to marginalism, value is subjective (since the same item—leisure time, consumption goods—have a different marginal utility to different consumers, or even to the same consumer under different circumstances) and therefore cannot be determined simply by measuring how much labor went into the production of an item. In the Pareto optimum, on the other hand, the exchange relations between commodities are not only determined by their marginal utility, but also by the marginal productivity of the factors of production available. This means that, in marginalism, commodities exchange at the marginal amount of labor necessary to produce them. In this sense, an LTV, or, more precisely, a value theory of marginal labor inputs, holds.〔The conditions under which relative prices of commodities, if determined by marginal utilities, are proportional to amounts of labor necessary to produce these commodities, are discussed in L. Johansen: labor Theory of Value and Marginal Utilities. Economics of Planning 1963/3, p. 89-103.〕 However, this applies to all factors of production and also to marginal utility. labor is nothing special. That these several value theories can hold all at the same time is made possible by marginal analysis.〔And whether the underlying mathematical functions are “well-behaved”, as the term is. Otherwise no optimum solution exists.〕 The Pareto optimum is defined as a situation where utility is maximised and at the same time all factors of production are employed most efficiently, leading to a situation, where all commodities exchange at their marginal utilities and at their - marginal - amounts of the different factors of production necessary to produce them. In other words, if empirically it was found out, that commodities exchange according to their marginally necessary labor inputs, this would confirm marginal theory. It would contradict Marx’s theory, because according to Marx these exchange ratios are determined by prices of production, which are generally different from the necessary labor inputs, the labor values. Implicitly, Marx is thus denying, that capitalism is in a state of Pareto optimality. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Criticisms of the labour theory of value」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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