I did read the definition that you wrote, and I think it's false, because both of those forms of labor are productive.

That's not how I'm defining productive here. You're right that they're both necessary, but only one adds value.

I take issue with this. C does not necessarily sell more than the sum of resources invested into M, it is only hoped that it will, otherwise there will be losses instead of profits, and the business will suffer financially. Ultimately, the value of C is determined by the market, it's out of the hands of the business to decide.

Do you agree that the price of production sets a floor at which C can be sold profitably?

That's because that's not the value which is contractually agreed upon.

Bingo.

Workers are not payed in accordance to the value of the things they produce, but rather in accordance to their value to the person who is paying them money. The employer is a consumer in this instance, because he/she is making subjective valuations based on how much he/she wants to pay money out of pocket for other people to produce for him/her.

Your given reason why the capitalist pays less than the full value of the workers' labor isn't important nor entirely accurate, but as it's not important, we'll move on.

If the labor theory of value contradicts subjective value theory, then it is nonsensical and easy to disprove.

It doesn't, really. They're not incompatible insofar as the labor theory of value also recognizes that value itself is a concept inside the minds of individuals that can only be realized or fulfilled by interacting with the environment - in this case, by commodities.

The reason why subjective value theory is generally accepted as being correct is because the people who determine value in the market are individual consumers who decide how much they are willing to pay for goods and services based on the complex subjective value systems in their brains.

And the problem here is that it doesn't explain prices, commodity values, or any other socioeconomic phenomena. It just states an uncontroversial and basic fact that doesn't help in dialectical socioeconomic analyses.

It doesn't matter how much value you might say something has because of labor, that isn't going to make people pay for it if they want something cheaper because they own their money so their subjective values trump your claims of labor value at the end of the day.

Once again, your disadvantage at not having read Marx is showing. The reason why something is cheaper is because there's more of it, and there's more of it because, by investing in more efficient technology, a capitalist has caused the same amount of labor to produce more commodities. The value of the commodities has decreased.

I think this warrants a discussion on the labor theory of value. Let me start by asking you a question. What do you think the labor theory of value is?

I'm also fairly certain that the LTV is one of the main reasons why Marx isn't taken very seriously in the economic sphere most of the time.

Actually, it's not. The main reason is something called the "Transformation Problem," but we don't have time for that here.

And this is a contract which you found reasonable enough to agree to, so there is no real problem in this interaction.

Exploitation does and will exist regardless of the consent of both parties. This is as true throughout history as it is now. The difference is that exploitation as revealed by Marx is more hidden than slavery or sweatshops.

The employer was responsible for the existence of the damned business in the first place. They produced the enterprise by investing resources into its growth, and increasing productivity by hiring other people is one of the main ways of doing this. Without the infrastructure of the business and its management, the goods being produced would not be distributed to any comparable degree, so to say that you are wholly responsible for the potential distribution of this good is to ignore the job that your boss is also doing regarding its distribution.

Did you not read my explanation of the capitalist mode of production? Once the capitalist has purchased the means of production and other tools, their value has been accounted for. This is a zero-sum exchange. The money he spent equals the stuff he got for the workers to work with. No value has been added. Once workers do work with it, however, the value they add to the materials is entirely theirs. That's the point of the mathematical sentence I provided in the explanation on the capitalist mode of production.

But if you're trying to say that the capitalists are necessary in capitalism, that's an irrelevant point that deserves no elaboration.