Aren capitalists just “exploiters” of laborers? Isn it workers who physically create products and generate economic values?
The labor theory of value states that all economic value is created by labor. Thus, on this theory, the value of a loaf of bread, for example, is dependent on how much people worked to produce that loaf. If this were true, then all wages paid for anything other than physical labor (i.e. management work) would be unearned since only labor creates value. But economic value is objective. That is, value is not produced by sheer physical labor, but also by the mental effort of businessmen who coordinate the efforts of those laborers, and by the entrepreneurs and stockholders who put their money on the line to fund such enterprises (and deserve a return on their investment). The value of the product of this work is determined by both the cost of these things and the value of the product to potential purchasers. This last (among other things) is what the Marxist ignores. By the Marxist theory, labor deserves payment, even if no one wants to buy the product that has been produced, simply becau
