mud pie argument

Definitions

The argument against the labor theory of value pointing out that mud pies that take an immense amount of labor still have little to no value.

Examples

“Actually, it was Böhm-Bawerk, one of the prominent leaders of the Austrian school [12], who used the ‘mud pie argument‘ to attack the classical economists in general and Karl Marx in particular for using the labour theory of value. The fact that a product ‘costs‘ a certain amount of labour does not mean⟳ that it has some value.”

“Firstly, as Marx asserts, for a commodity to have⟳ an exchange-value, it must first have⟳ a use-value – that is, there must be a social need⟳ for the commodity. If there was no such need⟳, the commodity would not and could not be exchanged at all, and hence it would contain⟳ no value. The mud pie argument, then, falls flat on its face⟳.”

CEFR level