Marx 200: The Abiding Relevance of the Labour Theory of Value

The paper examines Karl Marx's theory of value and its implications on the contemporary capitalist economy. By doing this, the paper critically reviews the principles of Marx's value analysis by extrapolating from the writings of Karl Marx and Neo -Marxists which fits into the Marxian theory of value. The study indicates that capitalism does have an overall tendency to extract surplus value from labour provided by the workers, since it is the most malleable (influenced) of things within the confines of capitalism in the production process as noted by Marx. According to Marx, a system like capitalism, where people are coerced or forced to sell their labour in order to survive is unjust and that in the modern capitalist economy, the rate of profitability or success in production is determined by the ability to produce surplus value. In contemporary capitalist economy, during the production process, the worker uses his/her labour to produce adequate goods and services, but only receive wages enough for subsistence, hence making a surplus for the capitalist. However, the question still remains whether the labourers/workers/proletariats have a choice of selling their labour or not in order to survive in the contemporary capitalist economy as it were in orthodox capitalism?

Karl Marx’s writings provide a uniquely insightful explanation of the inner workings of capitalism, which other schools of thought generally have difficulty explaining. From this vantage point, Marx’s works can help to explain important features and economic problems of our age, and the limits of their possible solutions. For example, the necessity and origin of money, the growth of the wage-earning class, uneven development, cycles and crises, and the relative impoverishment of the workers, leading to debt and overwork. The Value of Marx demonstrates that: • Capitalist production necessarily involves conflicts in production and in distribution. • Competition is an essential feature of capitalism, but it often generates instability, crises and unemployment, showing that capitalism is not only the most productive but also the most systematically destructive mode of production in history. • Capitalist economies are unstable because of the conflicting forces of extraction, realisation, and accumulation of surplus value under competitive conditions. This instability is structural, and even the best economic policies cannot avoid it completely. The author critically reviews the methodological principles of Marx’s value analysis and the best known interpretations of his value theory. He develops an interpretation of Marx focusing primarily upon the processes and relations that regulate social and economic reproduction under capitalism. When analysed from this angle, value theory is a theory of class and exploitation. The concept of value is useful, among other reasons, because it explains capitalist exploitation in spite of the predominance of voluntary market exchanges. The most important controversies in Marxian political economy are reviewed exhaustively, and new light is thrown on the meaning and significance of Marx’s analysis and its relevance for contemporary capitalism.

The paper examines Karl Marx's theory of value and its implications on the contemporary capitalist economy. By doing this, the paper critically reviews the principles of Marx's value analysis by extrapolating from the writings of Karl Marx and Neo -Marxists which fits into the Marxian theory of value. The study indicates that capitalism does have an overall tendency to extract surplus value from labour provided by the workers, since it is the most malleable (influenced) of things within the confines of capitalism in the production process as noted by Marx. According to Marx, a system like capitalism, where people are coerced or forced to sell their labour in order to survive is unjust and that in the modern capitalist economy, the rate of profitability or success in production is determined by the ability to produce surplus value. In contemporary capitalist economy, during the production process, the worker uses his/her labour to produce adequate goods and services, but only receive wages enough for subsistence, hence making a surplus for the capitalist. However, the question still remains whether the labourers/workers/proletariats have a choice of selling their labour or not in order to survive in the contemporary capitalist economy as it were in orthodox capitalism?

Graduate thesis for Sussex University's SPT (Social and Political Thought Program), supervised by Andrew Chitty. This paper critically examines the implications entailed in Marxian value theory brought by interpretations that stress Marx’s analysis of the value-form. Touching on areas such as the correct method of enquiry, and the aim of Marx's critique, it provides a detailed exposition of the traditional Marxian theory of value and investigates issues such as the problems of concepts like abstract labour and socially necessary labour time and substantialism in Marx’s “value”. These have led to value form theory and it ultimately identifies them as problematic enough to necessitate a break with the traditional understanding of value in Marxism towards a monetary theory of value. The reduction problem is both the central flaw at the heart of the traditional value theory, and what points towards a monetary value theory. The essay offers an elaboration of such a theory followed by a critical analysis of its implications. The implications are assessed first from the standpoint of the ontological insights of the value-form, and second the imperatives of (Marxian) critique. (1)The proposed value theory remains true to the core of the ethos of Marxist critique as a qualitative insight which illustrates how class relation determines the production and distribution of social product. (2)Beyond the merely qualitative, it remains compatible with the fundamental insight of Marxism, the law of value, asserted with reference to ideal precommensuration in production, thus remaining capable of identifying the causal mechanisms which constitute capitalist reproduction.Supplementing the conclusion is a discussion of what the value form approach entails for quantitatively-focused research, identifying the different positions of the debate and the direction in which it is heading, contextualizing those endeavours amidst a discussion of the priorities Marxist theory is to set for itself.

Marxism and the Critique of Value aims to complete the critique of the value-form that was initiated by Marx. While Marx’s “esoteric” critique of value has been rediscovered from time to time by post-Marxists who know they’ve found something interesting but don’t quite know which end is the handle, Anglophone Marxism has tended to bury this esoteric critique beneath a more redistributionist understanding of Marx. The essays in this volume attempt to think the critique of value through to the end, and to draw out its implications for the current economic crisis; for violence, Islamism, gender relations, masculinity, and the concept of class; for revolutionary practice and agency; for the role of the state and the future of the commons; for the concepts that come down to us from Enlightenment thought: indeed, for the manifold phenomena that characterize contemporary society under a capitalism in crisis.

Social Science Research Network, 2020

This text is inscribed in the debates raised by the new and growing interest in the economic theses of Karl Marx and, especially, in his Labor Theory of Value. The notion that animates this text argues that the multiple objections that have been raised about it actually point to versions and formalizations that correspond more to Ricardo's elaborations. Marx considered that his own version on the theory of value was not only different, but much more advanced and rigorous than that of his predecessor. In this text it is proposed that the new explorations on the theory of value, very promising for a critical interpretation of capitalism, rely decisively on reinterpretations of Marx in which elements of his reflection that have been eliminated by later thinkers, both supporters and contradictors, are rescued, and are developed and adapted for present times. The text consists of a succinct reconstruction of the main milestones of the development of the Theory of Labor Value, interpreted from this perspective, which raises versions that are different to the most widespread ones. Thus the formulations of this theory elaborated by Smith, Ricardo and Marx are examined. From a current perspective, the questions raised around the debate on the Transformation of Values in Prices are analyzed mainly those developed by Bortkiewicz and later by Sraffa and the Neoricardian School. It includes also a reflection on the conceptions in this regard of the " 20th-century Marxism", dominant in the mainstream of Marxism during a long tima, which here is argued that they are de facto closer to Ricardo than Marx. Two contemporary neo-Marxist currents are examined, the "New Approach" and the "sequentialists" (of the Temporal Single System analysts) that are intended precisely to present new developments from reinterpretations of Marx's theses. The text ends with the presentation of some original pieces of analysis that have this same perspective, which are partially supported by neo-Marxist formulations, but also consist in reelaborations of different moments of this tradition. It points to contribute to the formulation of an Abstract Labor Theory of Value.

Th is article proposes a reading of value theory fi rmly entrenched in the historicist framework of political Marxism; one which gives precedence to social relations and historical development over abstract logic and formal models. It argues that Marx's theory of value can be read as elucidating how social norms are being unwittingly created under capitalism by contrast with precapitalist societies. Th e article is divided into two sections. Th e fi rst examines the two main ways in which value is considered within Marxism and highlights the problems that can emerge when taking into account the issue of the specifi city of capitalism. Th e second section off ers an alternative formulation of value theory grounded in the notion of alienation. Th is leads to the conclusion that the idea that value is shaped by labour refers to a political fact about decisions concerning the organisation of the labour process, rather than an economic fact about the expenditure of labour in the process of production. Value refl ects the class struggles over the labour process and the norms that govern social life, rather than an embodied quantity of socially necessary labour-time expended within the labour process.

Capitalism: Concept, Idea, Image. Aspects of Marx's 'Capital' today, 2019

This chapter follows the formation of Marx's labour theory of value through a critique of the "value" theories of the classics, to show that only by the analysis and critique of the forms of value (the commodity, money, capital, profit, rent, etc.), Marx was able to pierce the "nexus of appearance" which constitutes the theoretical horizon of both the classics and some of their modern-day Marxist adepts, in order to establish the only coherent, social, and coherently social theory of value in the history of science.

Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, 2008

Trois ecoles principalrs de theorie de valeur mamienne sont identifiees et situees par rapport a des sujets essentiels oh il existe une controverse en matiere de valeur, en particulier le postulat que le travail vital est l'unique source de valeur nouvelle. L'effondrement de la theorie de valeur de 1'Ccole 'orthodoxe' (Ricardo-marxiste) est attribuee aux raisonnement errone d'une conceptualisation de la valeur de 'travail exprime,' une approche rejetee de la m&me facon par les theoriciens de la valeur 'neo-orthodoxe' et 'fondamentaliste'. Cependant la comparaison des ecoles neo-orthodoxe et fondamentaliste revele que seule cette derniere est compatible avec les objectifs et les postulats essentiels de la theorie de Marx. En m&me temps, on indique que l'approche fondamentaliste ne peut &re soutenue que par un engagement explicite a l'idee que le travail abstrait (essence-m6me de la valeur) existe en tant qu'universel structure1 specifique au capitalisme. Three major schools of Marxian value theory are identified and situated in respect to some pivotal issues of the value controversy, in particular the postulate that living labour is the sole source of new value. The collapse of the 'orthodox' (Ricardian-Marxist) school of value theory is attributed to the fallacies of an 'embodied labour' conceptualization of value, an approach which has been rejected by 'neo-orthodox' and 'fundamentalist' value theorists alike. However a comparison of the neo-orthodox and fundamentalist schools reveals that only the latter remains consistent with the objectives and essential postulates of Marx's theory. At the same time, it is argued that the fundamentalist approach can only be sustained through an explicit commitment to the idea that abstract labour (as the 'substance' of value) exists as a structural 'universal' specific to capitalism. * I wish to thank David Schweitzer, Blanca Muratorio, Bob Ratner, Bob Chernomas and Derek Sayer for their helpful comments on an earlier elaboration of the ideas developed in this article (Smith, 1989). Thanks are also due to two anonymous CHSA reviewers and to Jim Curtis for a number of suggestions that have significantly strengthened the final product. The argument presented here is based on work which I carried out whilst in receipt of funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This article was