I agree with Jim Devine that the Marxian theory of value is relevant at a high level of abstraction. I also agree with his approach to analysing the shifts in wages and salaries that have occurred in recent decades. It is heartening that people are contemplating introducing value theory into the curriculum. The challenge as Brad implies, how to avoid being attacked as using it in a dogmatic and reductionist way. The problem with talking about the labour theory of value is that it may be taken as limited to an arithmetical explanation of how capitalists extract surplus value. A mechanical LTV interpretation of Marx leaves us open to being bogged down in the terms of the debate of the "transformation problem", whereas one of the Marxian breakthroughs in recent years has been the importance of emphasising non-equilibrium dynamics. Up to a point people are relatively open to the perception that capitalist produce for profit, but they accept the justification of risk and can see certain sectors of capital contract, as in steel or coal mining, and fail to see the mobility of capital and that it is an impersonal force that keeps on growing in its domination of production. My desire is to open to concept of value to a wider concept of *social value*. In detailed exchanges with Andrew Kliman I accepted that Marx does not use "value" in a wider sense than exchange value. The wider sense in which I which to use it, and for which I propose we use the term social value, is that of all the human energy in a society that is put into the products of labour, including those use values that are not commodities. Certainly Marx talks about products of labour, under different forms of social organisation. Certainly too he indicates that under capitalism extra surplus value may be squeezed by intensifying the exploitation of the environment of labour power, and of human reproduction itself. Social value I suggest includes in capitalist society not only labour for the production of surplus value, but also labour and any expenditure of energy for the reproduction of society, including those activities outside commodity exchange, like the care of children by parents and the mutual nuturing without which society becomes a desert. Just as the law of value determines how society divides its productive labour between different types of commodities, so does the wider concept of social value determine how society distributes all its energy for its total reproduction. Does such a shift in emphasis detract from the exposure of the accumulation of surplus value by capital? No, because among other things it gives a theoretical voice to the widespread alarm about how capitalist-led production eats into the environment in an extraordinarily destructive and unsustainable way. Secondly, it provides a framework for analysing the destruction of all the subtleties of organic human society that accompanies the onward march of capitalist commodity exchange. This onward march has left remaining "no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest"; it has "reduced the family relation to a mere money relation". As each person searches more feverishly for their own identity, as mental illness rises, the commodity solutions to these problems become more and more plentiful at the hands of the generous capitalists. A wider concept of social value is, I submit, fully compatible with marxism, and gives us that wider perspective that can make the critique of the capitalist mode of production more immediately relevant to the wide variety of confused popular perceptions. By going up one step of abstraction further, we actually have a greater opportunity of coming back to link up with the concrete experience of the great majority of the population. This does not have to be at the expense of those most exploited by the system. But as they are largely in the third world, we need a global critique of capitalism that can be seen to be coherent from many angles, including to the more questioning sections of society in the privileged west. Thus I propose we describe exchange value as the exchange form of value which is a subset of a wider concept of *social value* relevant for all forms of human reproduction. It is a paradox, but this extreme abstraction may in the end be easier to explain concretely. Chris Burford London
