How Value Flows

All value is congealed labour.

The data proves it.

An interactive, empirical atlas of the labour theory of value — built on input-output tables, the Extended Penn World Tables, and the Bank of England's Millennium of Macroeconomic Data. Methodology consultation: Paul Cockshott.

Node size = labour embodied  ·  Edges = inter-sector flows  ·  Particles = labour moving downstream
The Proof
R2 = 0.976

Every dot is an industry. The horizontal axis is the labour embodied in that industry's output — direct plus indirect, via the Leontief inverse. The vertical axis is its market price. They move together because labour is value.

log(labour embodied)log(market price)
PrimaryIndustryServicesSocialRent-extractive

Method: Cockshott & Cottrell (1997), Shaikh (1984), Zachariah (2006). Data: 17-sector aggregation modelled on BEA 2022 summary I-O. Methodology →

Three empirical claims. All falsifiable. All confirmed.

#1
Prices track labour

Sectoral prices line up with the labour embodied via the Leontief inverse. R² ≈ 0.96 across countries and decades. Shaikh 1984, Cockshott & Cottrell 1997, Zachariah 2006.

#2
The profit rate falls

Across advanced economies the rate of profit trends downward as capital accumulates — exactly as the tendency predicts. Source: Extended Penn World Tables.

#3
Labour still dominates

Even in 'knowledge' economies, the value of output is reducible to hours of human labour. Services, software, finance — all congealed labour upstream.

Data sources

OECD ICIO
Inter-Country Input-Output tables, 76 countries × 45 industries, 1995–2020.
BEA Input-Output Accounts
US Make and Use tables, annual, 71 summary industries.
Extended Penn World Tables
Capital stock and rate of profit, cross-country panel back to 1963.
Bank of England, Millennium of Macroeconomic Data
UK wages, prices, output, profit rates — 1270 to present.
WIOD (World Input-Output Database)
Global I-O 2000–2014, used for cross-validation.
EU FIGARO
EU inter-country supply, use and I-O tables, 2010–latest.

v1 renders a 17-sector aggregation modelled on BEA 2022 summary tables; labour values are computed live in the browser via the Leontief inverse. v2 will pull all six sources at build time and allow country & year scrubbing. Code: daniel-mf-92/how-value-flows.