A Reconstruction of Marx’s Theory of Value: An Alternative Derivation of the Concept of Abstract Labour

Abstract

In his lucid work Die Wissenschaft vom Wert, Michael Heinrich showed that Marx’s conception of abstract labour in Capital is ambivalent. According to Heinrich, Marx was simultaneously developing a “substantialist theory of value” that draws upon a naturalist conception of abstract labour as physiological activity, and a “monetary theory of value” that is based on a different conception of abstract labour as a social relation constituted in the practice of commodity exchange. We will argue that Marx failed to derive an immanent conceptual link between value and labour within the frameworks of both substantialist and monetary theories of value. Furthermore, we will attempt to demonstrate that an immanent conceptual relation between value and labour can nevertheless be established, but only if a third conception of abstract labour as deobjectified subjectivity is brought in, as sketched out by Marx in Grundrisse.