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

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.