I promise I’m not a wrecker, I just have trouble finding Marxist sources for these things that aren’t big books on top of what I’m already reading. I think I understand that it says the exchange value of a product is proportionate to the labor time used to create it. Am I getting that correct? More labor-intensive commodities, or products requiring more specialized tools to make would cost more. And I know I’ve heard the criticism before. Heard it pretty much all my life. “Is a cookie still worth its labor if it’s burnt? Is a pie worth the labor if it’s a shit pie?” I have heard people say that Marx addresses such criticisms in Capital, but I haven’t gotten around to those tomes yet. Could someone explain to me how they are addressed and maybe straighten out other things I may have gotten wrong?
Marx’s Law of Value is for commodities, ie it cares more about averages of relatively equivalent commodities. The “mud pie” argument and other forms of LTV takedowns apply to Adam Smith’s LTV, not Marx’s Law of Value.
A burnt pie is a failed commodity. It isn’t socially necessary unless there’s a market for burnt pies, in which case it would be worth the average time necessary for said society to create a burnt pie, of course taking into account value from Constant and Variable Capital (constant Capital being things like tool usage, variable Capital being things like labor power).