Footnote No. 126: Don’t fault a chainsaw because it won’t plane your log

Marx’s theory—the  labour theory of value (LTOV)—is a theory of exploitation and its mechanism: the extraction of surplus value:  Asking the Marxist LTOV to produce a theory of relative prices is like asking the neoclassical marginal productivity theory (MP) to generate a theory of exploitation.  But what is more, while the Marxist LTOV can be bastardized to generate a theory of relative prices, however imperfectly, the NC MP theory cannot be modified to generate a theory of exploitation.  And further, the theory of relative prices that the NC theory generates is equally as flawed as the Marxist theory of relative prices—inappropriately derived as it (the marxist theory) is from the LTOV.  That is, the LTOV was not developed as a theory of relative prices but the MP theory of NC economics was developed as part of that broader task: i.e., it is purportedly tailored specifically for helping to provide an account of the formation of relative prices. Yet when fully worked through the NC theory must take on bastards to preserve its patrimony.  The Marxist theory of exploitation rooted as it is in the LTOV need import no bastards to finesse the infertility of its bride because its bride is in fact fecund for the purposes for which it was derived.