The Multiple Meanings of Marx’s Value Theory

The Marxian critique of political economy is inseparable from the meaning Marx gave to the “labor theory of value,” which in his case was rather a value theory of labor. The issue is how relations of production and circulation are affected by the fact that labor takes the capitalist social form of producing value and surplus value embedded in “things,” in commodities. In what follows, I will look at Marx’s value theory from five perspectives: (1) as a monetary value theory; (2) as a theory of exploitation; (3) as a macro-monetary theory of capitalist production; (4) as a theory of individual prices; and (5) as a theory of crises.