>>12677297>I could just as easily say that they are measured by the standards of value established by technological progress and the cost of land>Marx conveniently leaves out factors like this for ideological reasonsMarx does not leave out factors like this at all, they are instrinsic to his critique of calitalism. Volume 1 of Capital is almost entirely an account of how advances in technology allowed for and encouraged commodity production in towns and more efficient agriculture, more efficient agriculture that reduced the need for a full class of landed peasantry, opening up more people to work in industry in towns, devaluing the labor of industrial employment due to this influx of laborers, allowing for more ambitious and extensive industry. Land having a price on the market, instead of being something peasants are bound to and lords have domain over, is itself something that grew out of the increasing relevance of exchange-value brought on by industrial production and wage-labor becoming the crux of certain early modern european economies.
>If you want to say that this is already covered by your caveat (exchange value can only be used once use value is established) then what is LTV actually good for?This is a great question because it is basically Marx's point of departure from classical political economists like Smith and Ricardo, who he otherwise bases most of his premises in. Exchange value is premised on use value (any use, it doesnt have to be "actually useful" -- if there's a market for it, it's "useful" to someone), but use value doesnt appear out of nowhere. Whether you're canning food, bottling aspirin, or carrying plastic molds to the machine that makes Neil Degrasse Tyson funkopops, value is ultimately based on the availability of labor. Harvest of raw materials, production of commodities, transport along supply chains, stocking shelves to make the products available, etc. Value is always premised on, and reactive to, a supply of labor.
