Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Introduction
- Part I The Development of the Capitalist Mode of Production
- Part II The Capitalist Mode of Production
- Part III The Underdevelopment of the Capitalist Mode of Production
- Part IV The Value Theory of Labour
- Conclusion to Part IV
- Conclusion
- Appendix: On Social Classes
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
17 - The Labour Theory of Value and the Value Theory of Labour in Capital, Vol. I, Ch. 1, Sections 1–3
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface to the Second Edition
- Introduction
- Part I The Development of the Capitalist Mode of Production
- Part II The Capitalist Mode of Production
- Part III The Underdevelopment of the Capitalist Mode of Production
- Part IV The Value Theory of Labour
- Conclusion to Part IV
- Conclusion
- Appendix: On Social Classes
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It is commonplace today, even among people who have never read Marx's Capital, to believe that Marx shared a broadly similar theory of value to that developed by classical political economists; namely, that which has come to be known as ‘the labour theory of value’. However, I wish to suggest that this is not the case and that any such interpretation which presents Marx's view as a labour theory of value (or even as a more sophisticated version of this) is a very bad misreading of what Marx has to say in the first few chapters of Capital, Vol I. In making this claim I am basing my argument on the reading I have just presented in the previous chapter of this study. In trying to explain the difference between labour and labour-power Marx is forced to discuss the value of labour itself. This then gives the impression that his is a sophisticated labour theory of value when in actual fact he was a critic of this theory. The argument that labour is the source of all value (i.e. a crude labour theory of value of the kind presented by Adam Smith and David Ricardo) depends on an equally crude antithesis between nature and labour. In fact however, as Marx points out in the Critique of the Gotha Programme (MESW, 1968, 315), labour is not separate from nature, but is itself a manifestation of this: labour in the form of human labour-power is a force of nature too. Once this antithesis is resolved – in other words, once we realize that labour is natural too – we can see the actual basis of Marx's theory of value and in what way it differs from a crude labour theory.
In making the apparently startling claim that Marx's theory of value is not a labour theory I am not saying anything that has not been said before. Geoffrey Pilling, for example, has argued that ‘this notion – of a “labour theory of value” in Marx – is at best confusing and at worst quite wrong’ (Pilling 1980, 41);
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- Karl Marx's 'Capital': A Guide to Volumes I-III , pp. 142 - 155Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2021