I'll try to summarize why the LTV is so intrinsic to Marxist analysis. Marx's basic argument in Capital is that labor is what creates value in capital goods. The argument goes like this: if no labor is added to capital goods they eventually rot and become worthless and cease to be a capital good at all. Thus labor is at the heart of what drives value because what gives something value is labor time stored within it. This is at the heart of the exploitation of the workers because the capitalist gets this return without having spent any of their own time to build and develop the capital and they pay less than the value of the capital goods to the workers who made the goods in the first place.
Understanding the employee/employer relationship is at heart of understanding capital and the returns capital receive over time. The employee is paid in advance of sales (most of the time) and thus the employer shoulders the risk of those sales never materializing in the first place. To compensate employers for that risk, employees are paid less than the full output of their labor. As we know wages are not taken back if the product or service they were developing was never sold. It's a mutually beneficial relationship that explains profits in a way that does not involve exploitation but rather mutually beneficial exchange.
If there is no exploitation you don't have Marxism in the first place. This is a very basic summary of "Karl Marx and the Close of His System".
Understanding the employee/employer relationship is at heart of understanding capital and the returns capital receive over time. The employee is paid in advance of sales (most of the time) and thus the employer shoulders the risk of those sales never materializing in the first place. To compensate employers for that risk, employees are paid less than the full output of their labor. As we know wages are not taken back if the product or service they were developing was never sold. It's a mutually beneficial relationship that explains profits in a way that does not involve exploitation but rather mutually beneficial exchange.
If there is no exploitation you don't have Marxism in the first place. This is a very basic summary of "Karl Marx and the Close of His System".