Conclusions

The basic conclusion of the book is that Marx’s explanation of the money price of the commodity is the most logically consistent and intuitively plausible explanation among all competing explanations. I argue this is because it is the only approach that allows for a link between the value of the commodity and money without collapsing value into money price. I see this link stemming from Marx’s unique understanding of money and the functions it performs, particularly its measure of exchange value function. It is this understanding of money that sets Marx’s explanation of the money price of the commodity apart from those of the other approaches considered in the book, viz., those of Smith, Ricardo, Sraffa, Post-Keynesians, and Neoclassicals. I argue that Marx’s explanation of the money price of the commodity is the only explanation that allows changes in the relative money prices of commodities to be seen as taking place in the context of changes in the aggregate money prices of all commodities as well as independently of the latter, something that should be a basic tenet of any explanation of money price.