IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v34y2002i2p159-178.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Value and the quest for the core of capitalism

Author

Listed:
  • David Laibman

    (Economics, The Graduate School, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA; Tel.: +1-718-789-9565; fax: +1-718-789-3864 dlaibman@netzero.net)

Abstract

Despite its exasperating opacity and lack of closure, the value debate has a vital objective: to grasp those defining aspects of capitalist society that do not appear on the visible surface space of conscious individual actors. In pursuit of this objective, careful conceptual analysis reveals that the long-standing "transformation problem" is misconceived; that the labor value dimension in the abstract capitalist economy is determinate and unique. This solution to age-old puzzles enables us to renew the study of the relation between labor-as-value and the homeostatic and systemic aspects of capitalist reproduction that cannot be reduced to individual constrained optimization.

Suggested Citation

  • David Laibman, 2002. "Value and the quest for the core of capitalism," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 34(2), pages 159-178, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:34:y:2002:i:2:p:159-178
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://rrp.sagepub.com/content/34/2/159.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:34:y:2002:i:2:p:159-178. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.urpe.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.