A Monetary Labor Theory of Value

Abstract

A critical survey of the recent literature on the labor theory of value is offered, focusing upon the view of Marnian labor theory of value as a macroeconomic theory of exploitation within the money circuit of capita L The traditional and the 'new" solutions of the so-called transformation problem are rejected, and it is argued that the purely monetary reading of value and the revived clasical Marxist approach have mirror-like weaknesses. The paper claims that Rubin's insight - that in the end value is created in exchange but that the substance of value is latently present in production - can be pursued within a theory of money as a symbol. In this perspective the concept of exploitation as the extraction of surplus labor can be seen to be compatible with the concept of a non-commodity money. This reading of abstract labor theory of value argues that the quantitative aspect of Manes argument is relevant not for the setting of prices of production but rather for shedding light on the actual process of incessant change in the economic structure.