Well, his actual claim is that any product which sells for less than its inputs cost will not exist in the long run
As far as I remember, that's what he got to in the third volume of Das Kapital, but the first volume is very certain that the value of any product is a direct function of the amount of labour that went into it. I think the observation that Marx was a proponent of the Labour Theory of Value is uncontroversial? He didn't invent it, of course, but his name is strongly associated with it.
the first volume is very certain that the value of any product is a direct function of the amount of labour that went into it.
I'll have to wait until I get home to find the relevant section in my copy* to make sure I haven't misremembered it, but as I recall he claims a widget's value is lower bounded in the long run by the cost of labor because otherwise that laborer will starve / switch to doing something else.
That qualifier is very important, as with it the statement is a correct observation about equilibria, and without it the statement is an incorr...
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