I'm still digesting Allin Cottrell's contributions so am not yet able
to offer a substantive contribution to the debate. I just wonder if
participants are familiar with Diane Elson's view in her essay "The
value theory of labour", in D Elson (ed), Value: the Representation
of Labour in Capitalism, Humanities Press/CSE Books, 1979. Her
argument can be summed up in the following quote:
'My argument is that the object (emphasised - HR) of Marx's theory of
value was labour. It is not a matter of seeking an explanation of
why prices are what they are and finding it in labour. But rather of
seeking an understanding of why labour takes the forms it does, and
what the political consequences are.' (p.123)
The copy editor clearly slipped up on the punctuation, but the
meaning is clear. In her view, the crux of the matter is the
'rationalist' interpretation of most commentators that Marx offers a
'labour theory of value' in which labour, as an independent variable,
determines value, as a dependent variable. Marx's value theory
traces the network of social relationships through which the private
labour of individuals becomes 'universal social labour' - and does so
in the form of money, functioning as capital. The theory aims to
establish the roots of the social organisation of labour as it exists
in the abstract capitalist economy of Capital vol.1. Importantly,
labour-time is an 'immanent' measure of value, not an external
measure - it only 'becomes' value through exchange. What is to be
explained, for Marx, is not the banal fact that 'everything has its
price', but how a social order is constructed on the basis of private
property and alienated labour.
Well, maybe that was substantive......
Hugo Radice [EMAIL PROTECTED]
