Marx's theory
Marx definesBritish classical labor theory of value
Marx's value theory was developed from theSimplest case: labor costs only
Consider the simple example used by Adam Smith to introduce the subject. Assume a hunters’ economy with free land, no slavery, and no significant current production of tools, in which beavers and deer are hunted. In the language of modernCapital costs
Things become more complicated if production uses some scarceMarx's labour theory of value
Surplus value and exploitation
Marx distinguishes betweenLabour as the "value-creating substance"
Marx defined the "value" of aLet us take two commodities, e.g., corn and iron. The proportions in which they are exchangeable, whatever those proportions may be, can always be represented by an equation in which a given quantity of corn is equated to some quantity of iron: e.g., 1 quarter corn = x cwt. iron. What does this equation tell us? It tells us that in two different things—in 1 quarter of corn and x cwt. of iron, there exists in equal quantities something common to both. The two things must therefore be equal to a third, which in itself is neither the one nor the other. Each of them, so far as it is exchange value, must therefore be reducible to this third.
This common 'something' cannot be either a geometrical, a chemical, or any other natural property of commodities. Such properties claim our attention only in so far as they affect the utility of those commodities, make them use values. But the exchange of commodities is evidently an act characterised by a total abstraction from use value.
If then we leave out of consideration the use value of commodities, they have only one common property left, that of being products of labour. Along with the useful qualities of the products themselves, we put out of sight both the useful character of the various kinds of labour embodied in them, and the concrete forms of that labour; there is nothing left but what is common to them all; all are reduced to one and the same sort of labour, human labour in the abstract.
A use value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article. :—Karl Marx
''Capital'', Volume I, Chapter 1
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Variable and constant capital
As labour produces in this sense more than its own value, the direct-labour input is calledvariable capital Constant capital (c), is a concept created by Karl Marx and used in Marxian political economy. It refers to one of the forms of capital invested in production, which contrasts with variable capital (v). The distinction between constant and vari ...and denoted as . The quantity of value that living labour transmits to the deer, in our previous example, varies according to the intensity of the exploitation. In the previous example, . By contrast, the value of other inputs—in our example, the indirect (or "dead") past labour embodied in the used-up arrows—is transmitted to the product as it stands, without additions. It is hence calledconstant capital Constant capital (c), is a concept created by Karl Marx and used in Marxian political economy. It refers to one of the forms of capital invested in production, which contrasts with variable capital (v). The distinction between constant and var ...and denoted as ''c''. The value transmitted by the arrow to the deer can never be greater than the value of the arrow itself. In our previous example, .
Value formulas
The total value of each produced good is the sum of the above three elements: constant capital, variable capital, and surplus value. In our previous example: : Where stands for the (unit) Marxian value of beavers and deer. However, from Marx's definition of value as total labour embodied, it must also be true that: : Solving for the above two relationships one has: : for all . This necessarily uniform ratio is called by Marx the rate of exploitation, and it allows to re-write Marx's value equations as: :
Classical tableaux
Like Ricardo, Marx believed that ''relative'' labour values— in the above example—do not generally correspond to relative competitive prices— in the same example. However, in volume 3 of ''Capital'' he argued that competitive prices are obtained from values through a transformation'' process, whereby capitalists ''redistribute'' among themselves the given ''aggregate'' surplus value of the system in such a way as to bring about a tendency toward an equal rate of profit, , among sectors of the economy. This happens because of the capitalists' tendency to shift their capital toward sectors where it earns higher returns. As competition becomes fierce in a given sector, the rate of return falls, while the opposite will happen in a sector with a low rate of return. Marx describes this process in detail.
Marx's reasoning
The following two tables adapt the deer-beaver-arrow example seen above (which, of course, is not found in Marx, and is only a useful simplification) to illustrate Marx's approach. In both cases it is assumed that the total quantities of beavers and deer captured are and respectively. It is also supposed that the subsistence real wage is one beaver per unit of labour, so that the amount of labour embodied in it is . Table 1 shows how the total amount of surplus value of the system, shown in the last row, is determined. Table 2 illustrates how Marx thought this total would be redistributed between the two industries, as "profit" at a uniform return rate, ''r'', over constant capital. First, the condition that total "profit" must equal total surplus value—in the final row of table 2—is used to determine ''r''. The result is then multiplied by the value of the constant capital of each industry to get its "profit". Finally, each (absolute) competitive price in labour units is obtained, as the sum of constant capital, variable capital, and "profit" per unit of output, in the last column of table 2. Tables 1 and 2 parallel the tables in which Marx elaborated his numerical example.
Marx's supposed error and its correction
Later scholars argued that Marx's formulas for competitive prices were mistaken. First,competitive equilibrium Competitive equilibrium (also called: Walrasian equilibrium) is a concept of economic equilibrium introduced by Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu in 1951 appropriate for the analysis of commodity markets with flexible prices and many traders, and s ...requires a uniform rate of return over constant capital valued at its ''price'', not its Marxian value, contrary to what is done in table 2 above. Second, competitive prices result from the sum of costs valued at the ''prices'' of things, not as amounts of embodied labour. Thus, both Marx's calculation of and the sums of his price formulas do not add up in all the normal cases, where, as in the above example, relative competitive prices differ from relative Marxian values. Marx noted this but thought that it was not significant, stating in chapter 9 of volume 3 of ''Capital'' that "Our present analysis does not necessitate a closer examination of this point." Thesimultaneous linear equations In mathematics, a system of linear equations (or linear system) is a collection of one or more linear equations involving the same variables. For example, :\begin 3x+2y-z=1\\ 2x-2y+4z=-2\\ -x+\fracy-z=0 \end is a system of three equations in th ...method of computing competitive (relative) prices in an equilibrium economy is today very well known. In the greatly simplified model of tables 1 and 2, where the wage rate is assumed as given and equal to the price of beavers, the most convenient way is to express such prices is in units of beavers, which means normalising . This yields the (relative) price of arrows as : beavers. Substituting this into the relative-price condition for beavers, :, gives the solution for the rate of return as : Finally, the price condition for deer can hence be written as :. This latter result, which gives the correct competitive price of deer in units of beavers for the simple model used here, is generally inconsistent with Marx's price formulae of table 2.Ernest Mandel Ernest Ezra Mandel (; also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter (5 April 1923 – 20 July 1995), was a Belgian Marxian economist, Trotskyist activist and theorist, and Holocaust survivor. He fo ..., defending Marx, explains this discrepancy in term of the time frame of production rather than as a logical error; i.e., in this simplified model, capital goods are purchased at a labour value price, but final products are sold under prices that reflect redistributed surplus value.
After Marx
Engels
Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
''Other Marxist views
There are several schools of thought among those who see themselves as upholding or furthering Marx on the question of transformation from values to prices, or modifying his theory in ways to make it more consistent. According to thetemporal single-system interpretation The temporal single-system interpretation (TSSI) of Karl Marx's value theory emerged in the early 1980s in response to renewed allegations that his theory was "riven with internal inconsistencies" and that it must therefore be rejected or correct ...of ''Capital'' advanced by Alan Freeman, Andrew Kliman, and others, Marx's writings on the subject are most robustly interpreted in such a way as to remove any supposed inconsistencies. Modern traditional Marxists argue that not only does the labour theory of value hold up today, but also that Marx's understanding of the transformation problem was in the main correct. Andrew Kliman claimed using the TSSI framework: "Simple reproduction and uniform profitability do require that supplies equal demands, but they can be equal even if the input and output prices of Period 1 are unequal. Since the outputs of one period are the inputs of the next, what is needed in order for supplies to equal demands is that the output prices of Period 1 equal the input prices of Period 2. But they are always equal; the end of one period is the start of the next, so the output prices of one period necessarily equal the input prices of the next period. Once this is recognized, Bortkiewicz’s proofs immediately fail, as was first demonstrated in Kliman and McGIone (1988)".Joseph Green (2010)
On the non-naturalness of value: A defense of Marx and Engels on the transformation problem (part one)
/ref> In the probabilistic interpretation of Marx advanced by Emmanuel Farjoun and Moshe Machover in ''Laws of Chaos'' (see references), they "''dis''solve" the transformation problem by reconceptualising the relevant quantities as random variables. In particular, they consider profit rates to reach an equilibrium ''distribution''. A heuristic analogy with the statistical mechanics of an ideal gas leads them to the hypothesis that this equilibrium distribution should be a gamma distribution. Finally, there are Marxist scholars (e.g., Anwar Shaikh,Makoto Itoh is a Japanese economist and is considered internationally to be one of the most important scholars of Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political th ..., Gerard Dumenil and Dominique Levy, and Duncan Foley) who hold that there exists no incontestable logical procedure by which to derive price magnitudes from value magnitudes, but still think that it has no lethal consequences on his system as a whole. In a few very special cases, Marx's idea of labour as the "substance" of (exchangeable) value would not be openly at odds with the facts of market competitive equilibrium. These authors have argued that such cases—though not generally observed—throw light on the "hidden" or "pure" nature of capitalist society. Thus Marx's related notions of surplus value and unpaid labour can still be treated as ''basically'' true, although they hold that the practical details of their workings are more complicated than Marx thought.
Critics of the theory
Some mathematical economists assert that a set of functions in which Marx's equalities hold does ''not'' generally exist at the individual enterprise or aggregate level, so that chapter 9's transformation problem has no general solution, outside two very special cases. This was first pointed out by, among others, Bortkiewicz (1906). In the second half of the 20th century,Leontief Wassily Wassilyevich Leontief (russian: Васи́лий Васи́льевич Лео́нтьев; August 5, 1905 – February 5, 1999), was a Soviet-American economist known for his research on Input–output model, input–output analysis and ...’s andSraffa Piero Sraffa (5 August 1898 – 3 September 1983) was an influential Italian economist who served as lecturer of economics at the University of Cambridge. His book ''Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities'' is taken as founding the neo- ...’s work on linear production models provided a framework within which to argue this result in a general way. Although he never actually mentioned the transformation problem, Sraffa’s (1960) chapter 6 on the "reduction" of prices to "dated" amounts of current and past embodied labour gave implicitly the first general proof, showing that the competitive price of the produced good can be expressed as :, where is the time lag, is the lagged-labour input coefficient, is the wage, and is the "profit" (or net return) rate. Since total embodied labour is defined as :, it follows from Sraffa’s result that there is generally no function from to , as was made explicit and elaborated upon by later writers, notablyIan Steedman Ian Steedman (born 1941, in London) was for many years a professor of economics at the University of Manchester before moving down the road to Manchester Metropolitan University. He retired from there at the end of 2006, but was appointed as an eme ...in ''Marx after Sraffa''. A standard reference, with an extensive survey of the entire literature prior to 1971 and a comprehensive bibliography, isSamuelson Samuelson is an English-language patronymic surname meaning "son of Samuel (name), Samuel". There are alternative spellings such as the Scandinavian language, Scandinavian-origin Samuelsson and Samuelsen. It is uncommon as a given name. Samuelson m ...'s (1971) "Understanding the Marxian Notion of Exploitation: A Summary of the So-Called Transformation Problem Between Marxian Values and Competitive Prices" ''Journal of Economic Literature'' 9 2 399–431. Proponents of the temporal single system interpretation such as Moseley (1999), who argue that the determination of prices by simultaneous linear equations (which assumes that prices are the same at the start and end of the production period) is logically inconsistent with the determination of value by labour time, disagree with the notion that the mathematical proof that Marx's transformation problem has no general solution. Other Marxian economists accept the proof, but reject its relevance for some key elements of Marxian political economy. Still others reject Marxian economics outright, and emphasise the politics of the assumed relations of production instead.
Non-Marxian critiques
Mainstream scholars such asPaul Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he "h ...question the assumption that the basic nature of capitalist production and distribution can be gleaned from unrealistic special cases. For example, in special cases where it applies, Marx's reasoning can be turned upside down through an inverse transformation process; Samuelson argues that Marx's inference thatProfit is therefore the ourgeoisdisguise of surplus value which must be removed before the real nature of surplus value can be discovered." (''Capital'', volume 3, chapter 2)could with equal cogency be "transformed" into:Surplus value is therefore the arxistdisguise of profit which must be removed before the real nature of profit can be discovered.To clarify this point, it may be noticed that the special cases in question are also precisely those where J. B. Clark's old model of ''aggregate'' marginal productivity holds strictly true, leading to equality between the equilibrium levels of the real wage rate and labour's aggregate marginal product, a hypothesis regarded as disproved by all sides during theCambridge capital controversy The Cambridge capital controversy, sometimes called "the capital controversy"Brems (1975) pp. 369-384 or "the two Cambridges debate", was a dispute between proponents of two differing theoretical and mathematical positions in economics that starte .... One would thus have a "pure" state of capitalist society where Marx'sexploitation theory Exploitation of labour (also known as labor) is a concept defined as, in its broadest sense, one agent taking unfair advantage of another agent. It denotes an unjust social relationship based on an asymmetry of power or unequal exchange of value be ...and its main supposed confutation were both true. Like Clark's contention about the "fairness" of marginal-productivity wages, so Marx's basic argument—from the "substance" of value to the concept of exploitation—is claimed to be a set of non-analytical and non-empirical propositions. That is why, being non-falsifiable, both theories may be found to apply to the same formal and/or empirical object, though they are supposed to negate each other. Samuelson not only dismissed the labour theory of value because of the transformation problem, but provided himself, in cooperation with economists like Carl Christian von Weizsäcker, solutions. Von Weizsäcker (1962),Weizsäcker, Carl Christian von (2010): A New Technical Progress Function (1962). German Economic Review 11/3 (first publication of an article written in 1962) along with Samuelson (1971),Weizsäcker Carl Christian von, andPaul A. Samuelson Paul Anthony Samuelson (May 15, 1915 – December 13, 2009) was an American economist who was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. When awarding the prize in 1970, the Swedish Royal Academies stated that he "h ...(1971): A new labor theory of value for rational planning through use of the bourgeois profit rate. Proceedings of the National Acadademy of Sciences U S A
download of facsimile
/ref> analysed the problem under the assumption that the economy grows at a constant rate following the Golden Rule of Accumulation. Weizsäcker concludes:The price of the commodity today is equal to the sum of the 'present' values of the different labour inputs.Weizsäcker (2010962 Year 962 ( CMLXII) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * December – Arab–Byzantine wars – Sack of Aleppo: A Byzantine e ..., p. 262
Marxian reply to non-Marxian critiques
The Marxian reply to this mainstream view is as follows. The attempt to discard the theoretical relevance of the necessary preconditions of Marx's value analysis in volume 1 of ''Capital'' through areductio ad absurdum In logic, (Latin for "reduction to absurdity"), also known as (Latin for "argument to absurdity") or ''apagogical arguments'', is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absu ...is superficial. By first identifying that the preconditions necessary for J. B. Clark's old model of ''aggregate'' marginal productivity to hold true are the same as those necessary for Marxian values to conform to relative prices, we are then supposed to conclude that the foundation of Marx's analysis ''as based in these preconditions'' is faulty ''because'' Clark's model had been proven wrong in the Cambridge capital controversy. The superficiality stems from the fact that those who support this reduction forget that the Cambridge capital controversy called the entire concept of marginal productivity into question by attacking not Clark's special case assumptions but the notion that physical capital can be aggregated. Marx simply does not run into this problem because his analysis does not rely on an aggregation of physical quantities that receive a return based on their contribution as "factors" of production. The fact that marginal productivity in its aggregate form is "a hypothesis regarded as disproved by all sides during the Cambridge capital controversy" has nothing to do with the validity of the special cases of Marx, and thus we ''would not'' "have a "pure" state of capitalist society where Marx'sexploitation theory Exploitation of labour (also known as labor) is a concept defined as, in its broadest sense, one agent taking unfair advantage of another agent. It denotes an unjust social relationship based on an asymmetry of power or unequal exchange of value be ...and its main supposed confutation (Clark) were ''both'' true", as is concluded from this view,'' because'' the "correctness" or "incorrectness" of Clark's aggregate marginal productivity scheme in this case flows not from special case assumptions but from the fact that he is aggregating physical units of capital; i.e., Clark's argument would still not hold true ''even with'' the assumed special cases. To further clarify this point, consider the following. First, it is never possible to provide any absolute scientific proof for the truth of ''any'' particular concept of economic value in economics, because the attribution of economic value itself always involves human and moral interpretations that go beyond facts and logic. By nature, the concept of economic value is not a scientifically provable concept but an assumption. Marx himself explicitly ridiculed the idea that he should be required to "prove his concept of value". Finally, as Piero Sraffa showed, the theory of the production and distribution of a surplus, however it might be devised, is logically independent of any particular theory of the exploitation of labour. Labour exploitation may occur and be conceptualised in various ways, regardless of which theory of value is held to be true. Consequently, if Marx's theory of labour exploitation is false, this is a separate issue.
See also
* Capital accumulation *Critique of political economy Critique of political economy or critique of economy is a form of Social criticism, social critique that rejects the various social categories and structures that constitute the mainstream discourse concerning the forms and modalities of resourc ...*Labour theory of value The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian ...*Law of value The law of the value of commodities (German: ''Wertgesetz der Waren''), known simply as the law of value, is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy first expounded in his polemic ''The Poverty of Philosophy'' (1847) against ...*Prices of production Prices of production (or "production prices"; in German ''Produktionspreise'') is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy, defined as "cost-price + average profit". A production price can be thought of as a type of supply price for p ...*Return of capital Return of capital (ROC) refers to principal payments back to "capital owners" (shareholders, partners, unitholders) that exceed the growth (net income/taxable income) of a business or investment. It should not be confused with Rate of Return (ROR ...*Socially necessary labour time Socially necessary labour time in Marx's critique of political economy is what regulates the exchange value of commodities in trade and consequently constrains producers in their attempt to economise on labour. It does not 'guide' them, as it ca ...*Surplus value In Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to the owner of that product to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost ...*Temporal single-system interpretation The temporal single-system interpretation (TSSI) of Karl Marx's value theory emerged in the early 1980s in response to renewed allegations that his theory was "riven with internal inconsistencies" and that it must therefore be rejected or correct ...
Notes
References
* Marx, K. (1859) ''Zur Kritik der politischen Oeconomie'', Berlin (trans. ''A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy'' London 1971). * Marx, K. (1867) ''Das Kapital'' Volume I. * Marx, K. (1894) ''Das Kapital'' Volume III (ed. by F. Engels). * * * * * * * * * Alan Freeman: ''Price, value and profit - a continuous, general treatment.'' In: Alan Freeman, Guglielmo Carchedi (editors): ''Marx and non-equilibrium economics.'' Edward Elgar. Cheltenham, UK, Brookfield, US 1996. * Meek, R. (1956) 'Some Notes on the Transformation Problem' ''Economic Journal'' 66 (March) 94-107. * * Hicks, J. (1969) ''A Theory of Economic History'' Oxford. * Althusser, L. and E. Balibar (1970) ''Reading 'Capital' '' London. * Samuelson, P.A. (1971) "Understanding the Marxian Notion of Exploitation: A Summary of the So-Called Transformation Problem Between Marxian Values and Competitive Prices" ''Journal of Economic Literature'' 9 2 399–431. * Godelier, M. (1973) ''Horizon, trajets marxistes en anthropologie'' Paris. * Nell, E.J. (1973) 'Marx's Economics. A Dual Theory of Value and Growth: by Micho Morishima' (book review) ''Journal of Economic Literature'' XI 1369-71. * Morishima, M. and G. Catephores (1975) 'Is there an "historical transformation problem"?' ''Economic Journal 85 (June) 309-28. * Anwar Shaikh papers
* Alan Freeman papers
* Fred Moseley papers
* Makoto Itoh, ''The Basic Theory of Capitalism''. * Gerard Dumenil & Dominique Levy paper
* Duncan Foley paper
* Hagendorf, Klaus
Labour Values and the Theory of the Firm. Part I: The Competitive Firm. Paris: EURODOS; 2009.
* Moseley, Fred (1999).
A 'New Solution' for the Transformation Problem: A Sympathetic Critique
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Transformation Problem Marxist theory History of economic thought Marxian economics