The concept of value in Marx: A critique

The dissertation attempts to establish the meaning of the concept of value and the place it occupies in Marx's mature writings. I argue that there is a break in the logic of Capital after the first three chapters of volume 1. In the first three chapters, the problematic of value is introduced in the framework of commodity exchange relation without any reference to the capital-wage labor relation. The rest of Capital, however, deals with the capitalist mode of production as its object of knowledge that is defined as a system of production based on a social division of labor, which is dominated by the capital-wage labor social relations of production. I argue that capital-wage labor relation cannot be interpreted as a commodity relation. Moreover, Marx's analysis of the capitalist economy in terms of labor-time is interpreted as an outcome of an analysis of the capital-wage labor relation. Therefore, the meaning of the concept of value must be established in the context of the capitalist mode of production and not an exchange relation between commodities.; The understanding of Marx's problematic is developed in contradistinction to Ricardo's and neo-Ricardian problematic. The concept of a social relations of production is found to be absent in Ricardo's problematic. Ricardo conceives production as something purely technical rather than social. In this case the capital-wage labor relation reduces to a technical relation. Marx's distinction between labor and labor-power reveals an inherent contradiction in the conceptualization of production as simply a technical relation.; The transformation problem is interpreted as a relation between value and prices that reveals the mechanism through which the total surplus value is redistributed among the capitalist class. I argue that this relation must be based on the condition that total value in circulation equals total prices. The average value rate of profit, i.e., (S/(C+V)), is found to be the correct rate of profit for the price system as well. This result depends on the interpretation of the luxury sector (or the production for capitalists' consumption) as unproductive labor. I argue that a consistent development of Marx's discussion on productive/unproductive labor leads to this conclusion. In this case, I show that both of Marx's invariance conditions of the transformation problem, i.e., total value equals total prices and total surplus value equals total profit, turn out to be true.