This is a simplified Bohm Bawerk argument
“The value of one commodity is to the value of any other, as the labour time necessary for the production of the one is to that necessary for the production of the other. “As values, all commodities are only definite masses of congealed labour time.”
Capital volume 1 chapter 1
So from this you could make the equation V = L
Where V is the exchange value of a good and L is the quantity of labour that goes into it
Obviously this is wrong and Marx knows this, a 1 hour of a doctors time has much more exchange value than 1 hour of a cleaners time.
So we get this clarification in chapter 2:
“Skilled labour counts only as simple labour intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple labour”
So the equation V = S*L
Where S is how skilled the labour is.
This seems to work but there is a problem here.
We can use this line of logic to prove lots of things now let L represent the weight of the commodity and S how special the weight is. The equation still works. Putting this into the Marxian phraseology we would get.
“The value of one commodity is to the value of any other, as the weight of the commodity of the one is to the weight of the other. “As values, all commodities are only definite masses”
And
“Special weight counts only as simple weight intensified, or rather, as multiplied simple weight”
That would still be a valid equation, and indeed you could follow this line of logic for volume, oxygen expended or just about anything else.
Indeed you could even say that the exchange value is equal to the amount of profit made with some profit counting as special profit.
V = Profit*how special that profit is
And then write a volume of literature on how the workers exploit the capitalists.
(that last point might be a bit of a stretch).
This doesn’t actually refute the exploitation doctrine you could still argue that workers are exploited, but applying the logic of LTV to other aspects of a commodity gives clearly absurd results.
All credit goes to Bohm Bawerk who did a much better job of explaining it that I did in “Marx and the close of his system”.