Tag Archives: Marx’s Law of Value

Labour value in volume 1 of Capital is defined in the following passages: “A use-value, or useful article, therefore, has value only because human labour in the abstract has been embodied or materialised in it. How, then, is the magnitude of this value to be measured? Plainly, by the quantity of the value-creating substance, the labour, contained in the article.” (Marx 1906: 45).“Since the magnitude of the value of a commodity represents only the quantity of labour embodied in it, it follows...

The socialist German economist Robert Wilbrandt (1875–1954), the author of Karl Marx: versuch einer Würdigung (Leipzig, 1920), had an interesting interpretation of the “law of value” in volume 1 of Capital, as described by Alexander Gray: “Professor Wilbrandt, in his very sensitive appreciation of Karl Marx, offers us two points which are of some interest towards an appreciation of what Marx's admirers think that Marx really meant. The first is a rather naive admission that the first Volume...