The reality of the law of value

In the wake of Böhm-Bawerk’s criticism that Marx’s law of value runs contrary to empirical facts, Marxian economics has developed mainly in two different directions: one based on the simple commodity production and the other on the mathematical identity of value with prices of production (the transformation problem). The author agrees with neither, arguing that Marx intended to base the law of value on the production process of capital, as in Capital Volume 1, independently of Capital Volume 3. However, the notion of this process and the law of value have not been sufficiently explained in Volume 1. Marx presents the value of a commodity as socially necessary labour objectified in Chapter 1 on the commodity, and later applies this rule to capitalist commodity products in Chapter 7. Pointing out the defects of this method, this article relocates the presentation of the dual nature of labour to the Labour Process (Chapter 7, Section 1), and the proof of the substance of value or the law of value to the Valorization Process (Chapter 7, Section 2). The Labour Process plays a key role in Volume 1, but it contains a fatal flaw. Consequently, Section 2 ends up with insufficient explanation. By reconstructing the Labour Process and the Process of Creating Value and Surplus value, the author confirms the meaning and reality of the law of value in Chapter 7, Section 2.

Camera Obscura or the Way Things Appear: Some Remarks About Marx’s Economic Writings

I analyse the foundations of Marx’s analysis to examine the applicability of Marx’s theory of the capitalist economy to the study of current economic events. In this paper, I do not present critique the interpretations of Marx’s works made by contemporary economists; however, much of modern Marxian economics is invalid in terms of Marx’s own method and inappropriate for understanding modern capitalism. The paper is concerned with topics that have been the subject of contemporary debate and are central to Marx’s own economic writings. Here I present only textual evidence of the main tendencies in the development of capitalism discovered by Marx. There are limits to value (= time) as the sole criterion of economic expediency; the constant reproduction of a scarcity of jobs amid an abundance of goods; enlargement of material commercial relations on the other spheres of social life; development of monetary relations – the emergence of derivatives of money, i. e., ersatz money, digital money. The main conclusion that I came to is that some societies are gradually losing value and moral guidelines, threatening the very development and even the existence of other communities or peoples.

The epistemological crisis of Marxian economic theory

In Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, MacIntyre argues that neo-Aristotelians have much to learn from Marx’s economic theory, not only for understanding the nature of capitalism, but also for thinking about alternative social and political institutions. This article outlines the arguments given by MacIntyre for embracing Marxian economic theory and argues that if Marxian economics is a tradition of enquiry, in the MacIntyrean sense of the term, we should take seriously the debates within this tradition in order to conclude whether it has been able to withstand internal and external criticism. I argue that Marxian economic theory, as a tradition of enquiry, has been defeated by its opponents and that a synthesis between Aristotelian moral philosophy and Marxian economics is an obstacle to the development of MacIntyre’s political philosophy.

Marxian Economics: Notes from a Neo-classical Viewpoint

Marxian economics has the twin features of attracting some of the best minds and at the same time being rejected by policymakers world over, even by those who had adopted them to begin with. These features are discussed in this article. It is argued that the first feature is because of the existence of inequality and its worsening and associated poverty, and the difficulty in the continued extraction of surplus is a possible explanation for the second. It is further argued that the labour theory of value is not really essential to the theory of exploitation of workers by capitalists, and we try to establish that Marx was way ahead of his time in setting up the worker–employer relation in modern terms. JEL: A20, B13, B14, B24, B51, D02, D86