Labor and Value

Obscured by over a century of subsequent political hysteria, nearly culminating in a nuclear war, is the analytical heart of Marx' criticism of Wealth of Nations--the Value of Labor, Smith's concept of which is both unjust and immoral, according to Marx.  It is unjust, argues Marx, because the true measure of Labor is the profitability of its products, not, as Smith, holds, its market Value, with the substitution of the latter for the former amounting to a cheating of a laborer.  It is immoral, because by treating them as commodities, it dehumanizes laborers.  A further flaw, unaddressed by Marx, is methodological.  For, Smith implicitly argues that 1. Market Value is the resultant of Supply and Demand; 2. Thus, Market Value expresses an equilibrium; 3. Thus, Market Value is just; and 4. Therefore, the Market Value of Labor is just.  However, regardless of the questionable truth-values of #2 and #3, the inference from the former, a descriptive proposition, to the latter, a normative judgment, is invalid according to Smith's own Empiricist principles, and, hence, so, too, is his conclusion.  Now, that lacuna could explain why Marx' criticism has apparently never been treated with intellectual dignity, while, Marxism's commitment to sometimes violent historical processes likely compounds the indignity.