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Read the section in Capital where Marx tries to prove that capital adds no additional value–read it very carefully–and see whether Marx was or was not trying to prove it from “first principles”, where those first principles are the use-value/exchange-value dialectic that I outline in my papers. If he was simply starting from a definition in which labour was the only source of value, then all that confusing (and logically false) language would have been unnecessary.

In any case, it’s not something that can be taken just from definitions alone. There are logical consequences to the LTV that are well outlined in Steedman’s “Marx After Sraffa”, while attempts to get around them result in travesties like the TSS interpretation of Marx. In effect, if Marx did truly believe the LTV, and it was central to his logic, then there’s not much in Marx worth knowing.

However from my point of view the LTV was an error that Marx preserved, but provided the means to transcend and build a far richer theory.

There’s a bit to unpack in that Grundrisse quote. Your thesis looks very interesting and I would like to get the time to read it one day.

Not having read it , nor much of the Grundrisse, I’m sure I don’t get the full gist of your argument, but on my reading of Vol. 1 of Capital, I wouldn’t agree that in that volume “Marx has established the source of surplus value, and has done so without any initial presumption that labor was the only source of value”. Rather, Vol. 1 seems to me to hang together as an interconnected logical whole.

For example, the quote from page 188 of Vol 1 you provide in “Use Value, Exchange value and the demise of Marx’s labor theory of value” I think backs up rather than undermines the view that Marx in that chapter was working under the presupposition that value is socially necessary labor time, and therefore that only living rather than ‘dead’ labor (means of production)can create surplus value.

I think David Harvey, from his perspective as a geographer, has a fairly flexible and undogmatic take on the labor theory of value, recognising that it has no use as an accounting tool or empirically observable magnitude, but construing it as the ‘essence’ underlying the appearances of some social phenomena. I think he has some valuable insights.

Thanks, and welcome aboard here.

Marx does indeed define value that way in chapter 1; but well before then he believed he had derived the meaning of value from a dialectical analysis of capital that also appeared first in the Grundrisse, and earlier than the section you cite. However that derivation contradicted the proposition that labour was the only source of value–and I believe that when Marx first developed it, he realised this, or rather scared himself with the realisation that it might contradict that proposition.

The actual point at which Marx developed the analysis that let him proceed not merely from a definition, but a derivation, is on pp. 266-267 of the Grundrisse (in chapter 5) in a long footnote marked not by a number but an asterisk (look it up and read it carefully–it’s a remarkable passage but too long to reproduce here, in the sentence “In the relation of capital and labour, exchange value and use value are brought into relation; the one side (capital) initially stands opposite the other side as exchange value, [*] and the other labour” [http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch05.htm#p266]), stands opposite capital, as use value”).

Have a good read of that and you will see one of the several times in Marx’s intellectual life when he had a blindingly brilliant realisation. However he rapidly sought a means to resuscitate his prior belief, which was a return to that definitional approach to what value was–but that definition remained in conflict with his derivation.

His first, genuine application of the dialectic did reach a contradictory proposition that “the opposite of capital cannot itself be a particular commodity, for as such it would form no opposition to capital, since the substance of capital is itself use value; it is not this commodity or that commodity, but all commodities”. He then rapidly retreats from the abyss this implies for the labour theory of value–that labour, as a single commodity, cannot be the opposite of capital–and instead asserts that “The communal substance of all commodities, i.e. their substance not as material stuff, as physical character, but their communal substance as commodities and hence exchange values, is this, that they are objectified labour.” This is a contradiction of the proposition that one commodity cannot be the opposite.

When you apply his dialectical logic properly, you get the result that labour and capital can both be sources of surplus value in production. If you take a careful look even at Capital, you will find him attempting to use the use-value/exchange-value dialectic to produce the result that labour is the only source of value–and easily using it to show that labour is a source of value, but fudging the vital additional proposition that capital could not be a source of surplus.

I cover all this in detail in my thesis on Marx, which is downloadable from the Research page here (http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/papers/Keen_Marx_Thesis.pdf), and also in three papers that are on that page.

So Harvey’s lectures, and all the work of all Marxists who attempt to preserve the labour theory of value, are ignorning one of Marx’s great insights, and failing to do for him what he saw himself as doing for Hegel:

“It is conceivable that a philosopher should be guilty of this or that inconsistency because of this or that compromise; he may himself be conscious of it. But what he is not conscious of is that in the last analysis this apparent compromise is made possible by the deficiency of his principles or an inadequate grasp of them. So if a philosopher really has compromised it is the job of his followers to use the inner core of his thought to illuminate his own superficial expression of it.“

I very much enjoyed reading “Debunking Economics” several years ago. After recently watching David Harvey’s video lectures on “Reading Capital” and reading Volume 1, I decided to revisit you criticisms of the labour theory of value, which I didn’t have the background knowledge to grasp when I read you book.

Having now read your paper on the Demise of Marx’s labour theory of value, I am a bit confused re your argument. You come to the conclusion that commodities other than labour power could be a source of surplus value.

However, in chapter 1 of Volume 1 Marx defines value as socially necessary labor time, this being the one attribute that all commodities have in common and which therefore makes them commensurable. Chapter 6 to 8, as I read them, presuppose the definition of value given in chapter 1. So it seems to me that, by definition, a machine could not produce any more value than was embodied in its production and that the only commodity that could do this is labour power (due to the fact that the socially necessary labour time embodied in its production is less than the time for which it is used by the capitalist).

Of course, a lot of criticisms can and have been made of the validity of Marx and Ricardo’s definition of value, but this seem to me to be a wholly separate issue from whether means of production can be a source of surplus value, which, by definition, they can‘t be. Any thought on this?

Incidentally, I think that Marx recognised that as automation increased, the applicability and relevance of the labour theory of value would diminish. Eg this section of the Grundrisse: Contradiction between the foundation of bourgeois production (value as measure) and its development. Machines etc. ttp://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch14.htm

Eric Aarons (born 1919) is a member of the third of four generations of the Aarons family who played leading roles in the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). …
Aarons played an important role in the party’s work from the mid-1940s to the winding up of the party in the early 1990s. He rose to be in charge of party education, to be a leading theorist and author, a powerful advocate for de-Stalinisation of the CPA and was one of three people who jointly replaced his older brother, Laurie Aarons, as CPA National Secretary in 1976.

Steve, you say that “there’s no way” that Aarons has bought into any particular ideology 100%. However, it’s difficult to imagine this author presenting an unbiased opinion.

Therefore your ability to growth the economy is inherently linked to

1 – how much energy you expend to secure the energy you need. The less return on energy, the less energy available for use in other economic activity.

2 – the efficiency with which you put energy to use for productive means once you have it.

Developed nations have only really decoupled energy growth and GDP growth by outsourcing production to the developing world – i.e. as a rule, globally we don’t do well on the efficiency front. I’d suggest therefore that globally, our economic fortunes are still very closely linked with our ability to secure high rates of energy return on enegry invested

Peak Oil probably brought forward the crisis (by affecting US household cash flow), and Peak Oil means it is even more important to control debt going forward (because growth is likely to be slower) but they are not the same thing.

Peak Oil is a problem without a debt crisis and a debt crisis is a debt crisis without peak oil.

the idea appears a little under developed, but I’m sure will appeal to readers here