Is "intrinsicism" economics jargon? See http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=intrinsicist
I have never heard the word from anyone other than followers of Ayn Rand. --LMS
The word appears, but rarely, in the philosophical literature, I think.
Two examples I found on the web:
However, the correct jargon here is 'intrinsic value theory', so I changed it.
Other examples of 'intrinsic value theory', besides the labor theory of value, would include various forms of environmentalism, and at least one theory (not of any repute, I think, but I did read it somewhere) that the 'real' value of any thing is the amount of energy it took to produce it.
The historical materialism page has a better explanation of the labor theory of value than the labor theory of value article, it seems. Ed Poor
- That page has no explanation of the Labor theory at all; I have no idea what you're talking about. --LDC
Some mention ought to be made of Marx's use of his theory of surplus value, which he derivied from his version of the labor theory of value, in justifying violent revolution. Marx spoke of "capitalist guilt" and justified revolution of the working class against the "ruling class" of capitalists, on the grounds that capitalists were stealing the value of workers' labor. Marx ascribed no value to capital, technology, innovation, leadership, etc., but claimed that 100% of each worker's production belonged to the worker: any surplus resulting from, say, a factory selling the fruits of his labor is the precise moral equivalent of theft. Ed Poor
- Ed, Marx did ascribe value to capital. According to Marx, the value of capital is the amount of labor required to produce it. Nor did he argue, AFAIK, that managers, entrepeneurs, innovators, etc. did no useful work, or didn't deserve any pay. As I understand it (and I warn you I have never read much Marx--Das Capital was too boring), his argument was simply that they were being paid a lot more than they deserved to be--that one hours work as a manager deserved no more pay than one hours work on the factory floor, not the tens or hundreds of times more pay that managers get in practice. -- SJK
I was interested by Ricardo's reductio ad absurdum argument given in the article.
The argument certainly seems logically correct, but I think the conclusion drawn is too sweeping. I would have thought a better conclusion would to be: for the labor theory of value to hold, the rate of profit should be zero. My understanding of, say, Marx is that he believed the rate of profit would indeed tend to zero, leading to his 'crises of capitalism'.
I'm not much of an expert at all on this, which is why I haven't changed the page, but I think this aspect of the argument deserves looking at. Enchanter