Like many of my fellow hexbearians, I like to punish myself with the cognitohazard that is reddit. Today, I encountered this post, on a joke explanation subreddit, and it was accompanied by a particularly stupid series of comments from an r/neoliberal poster (who also had an AI Ghibli profile picture, truly a potent combo) claiming that Marx's LTV "falls apart under scrutiny" among other things. Essentially, the discussion seemed to center around the idea that, because a top OnlyFans earner makes so much more than the median, labor cant possibly explain the value they are creating, since the labor they are doing should be fairly similar.
I thought it would be a fun exercise in deepening my understanding of LTV to try and formulate arguments against this, and hopefully you feel inclined to add your own thoughts down below!
The first claim the neolib makes is that marx thought all labor was equal between individuals (lmao no he didnt) but hes rather swiftly shut down by someone bringing up Socially Necessary Labor Time. In an attempt to save himself from this obvious hole in his critique, he says a few things.
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He claims that marx's idea of Socially Necessary Labor Time, particularly the idea of the average productivity that a given laborer would be compared to, has a low standard deviation. I'm not sure if this is my ignorance on the subject or if hes pulling this out of his ass, but did Marx really imply this anywhere? He is obviously trying to imply that the difference between a top and median onlyfans earner is a massive deviation, and therefore Marx was wrong, but did Marx ever actually make a claim like this?
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He claims that Socially Necessary Labor Time does not have a rigorous mathematical definition because Marx was too bad at math to give it one. While I agree that what is "Socially Necessary" is up for some amount of debate, I feel like this is again a stupid thing to say when he is referencing the average. What rigorous mathematical definition is required to figure out an average? It really feels like hes trying to appeal to the complexity of modern western economics and their obtuse formulas (which ironically seem to have far less predictive power about reality than anything Marx ever said) when there is nothing particularly mathematically complicated about calculating this average, whats prohibitive is the collection of the data. Its a bit like saying it would be hard to figure out, with perfect accuracy, the average age of all humans on Earth. The math isnt whats hard, its finding every single persons age that is tedious.
The delusional ramblings of a neoliberal aside, I think there are some important factors missing from the discussion. For one, I would inquire how a neoliberal would seek to explain this phenomenon; could you really confidently say "This top earner is actually 10,000 times more attractive than the median one. If they are a 10, then the median earner must necessarily be a .001"? It seems a bit ridiculous to suggest that the attractiveness differential between any two individuals could be that high. But more importantly, I think theres a lot of "invisible" labor that is being ignored in order for the neoliberal to make his argument. Its easy to say "Top earner shoved this up their butt, median earner shoved this up their butt, they are doing the same labor", but anyone who is familiar with these types of services knows that its actually usually people that were already famous that have the largest platform. Basically, all the labor they did to amass that following is being ignored so that they can be equated. That doesnt even begin to mention the other labor that could potentially be separating these individuals; if the commodity you are selling is your body, what about all the labor that goes into its maintenance? All the dieting, working out, cosmetic surgery, etc that a top earner has both the means and the impetus to work towards, is not being factored into this labor comparison. All the constant capital in the form of high quality cameras, rented hotel rooms, ring lights, is again ignored when comparing profitability.
Finally, I remember marx saying something about nature being just as much a source of wealth as labor (I think its something particularly about use-value but thats where my understanding gets murky, would love to have that clarified), and in this case obviously if you are just born with massive honkers that is going to convey a definite advantage to you in your onlyfans career over someone born with neurofibromatosis.
I know this is probably the most ridiculous thing any of us could spend our intellectual energy on but I refuse to cede any ground to some dork neoliberal and was frustrated by my own inability to formulate a counter-argument, so I came here hoping the great minds of hexbear could dish out some wisdom on the subject. Heres the link to the comment thread if you want to see what the lib said for yourself: https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1kb4t77/comment/mpruwa4/
"who's going to pay for insurance without employers" levels of discourse and what answers I've got, you've got as well.
Why didn't Marx think of all this, and why didn't he consider the worker, whose output is decreased because he sprained his wrist after wanking, all have the same answer. None of it matters. Socially necessary labour time is a reasonable abstraction, based on the fact that a gross total is produced over some time period, which gives us an average time required per unit. Questioning this is the same as questioning average speed over x distance at t time. It's saying averages and expectations, extremely frequent functions in maths, physics and chemistry, have to be justified every time.
The answer the idiot neoliberal really wants is what divine source of idealisation Marx, and therefore contemporary Communists are using. That's what price=value is. It's saying that the deaf, blind and dumb hand of the market is a divine pointer for some ideal number. We're materialists, we neither expect the metaphysical to affect thee results nor do we ascribe divinity to what is merely a function of the material.
The liberal approach of "whatever is gained is earned, whatever is earned is deserved" is the result of capitalism creating a distribution impossible to justify and work difficult to quantify. Every neoliberal, every SocDem, every fascist hills this to be true implicitly, even if they put up a bunch of caveats when their feet are held to the fire. I don't think the higher stage of communism will require marketing, but there will still be some service work and they will be either impossible or extremely impractical to remove from the total output. I don't really have a way to quantify them either, if not labour time. I mean, deliveries made and tables served are one thing, but papers signed, phone calls made, lines of code written? Companies are trying that shit and finding out on real time that it creates perverse incentives.
Honest suggestion: don't bother. People with a good reason to reject reality will come up with a hundred excuses by the time you disprove one. Trying to prove something to one's interlocutor's satisfaction and have them admit that is a fool's errand almost every time.