 Not everyone agrees, however, that Marx’s theory is dependent on the labor theory of value in this way. G.A. Cohen, for instance, argues that Marx’s theory of exploitation is not only independent of the labor theory of value, but incompatible with it (Cohen 1979: 345–6). Marx’s account of exploitation is premised on the claim that value created by workers is appropriated by capitalists. But the labor theory of value holds that the value of an object is a function of the labor that would be currently required to produce it, regardless of how much labor actually went into producing it. Paradoxical as it may seem, the labor theory of value is incompatible with the claim that labor alone creates value.