Guido Starosta, Alejandro Fitzsimons

Abstract

This article critically examines the received wisdom on the value of labor power that posits the workers’ material reproduction and the class struggle as two independent factors that determine the bundle of wage-goods consumed by the working class. It shows that this reading has no solid textual basis on Marx’s writings. Furthermore, it argues that it rests on a problematic separation of the actual immanent unity between materiality and social form in the capitalist mode of production.

Keywords

Value of labor power, class struggle, materiality, social form

From: Review of Radical Political Economics 2018 50 (1)

Editor: Wang Yi