1987Capital & ClassRequires access

Exploitation and the Labour Theory of Value: a neo-Marxian reply

Steve Ran kin

Open publisher page 8 citations

Abstract

It is argued that the purpose of the Labour Theory of Value is to provide a theory of capitalist exploitation, not a theory of relative prices. As such, the Morishima-type approach to the Steedman critique offers a convincing restatement of the Fundamental Marxian Theorem associating profit with the performance of surplus labour time. By comparison, the Roberts approach involves some strange arithmetic and the importation of a hybrid price/value term which makes it difficult to infer the Fundamental Marxian Theorem.

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What this paper is about

It is argued that the purpose of the Labour Theory of Value is to provide a theory of capitalist exploitation, not a theory of relative prices. As such, the Morishima-type approach to the Steedman critique offers a convincing restatement of the Fundamental Marxian Theorem associating profit with the performance of surplus labour time. By comparison, the Roberts approach involves some strange arithmetic and the importation of a hybrid price/value term which makes it difficult to infer the Fundamental Marxian Theorem.

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Available abstract

It is argued that the purpose of the Labour Theory of Value is to provide a theory of capitalist exploitation, not a theory of relative prices. As such, the Morishima-type approach to the Steedman critique offers a convincing restatement of the Fundamental Marxian Theorem associating profit with the performance of surplus labour time. By comparison, the Roberts approach involves some strange arithmetic and the importation of a hybrid price/value term which makes it difficult to infer the Fundamental Marxian Theorem.

Key concepts: Surplus value, Prices of production, Economics, Labor theory of value, Neoclassical economics, Profit (economics), Value theory, Value (mathematics)

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