The value of labour power?

[Sympo]

Thank you DJP, Smeet and Dave. I see now that it is not circular reasoning behind the marxist explanation for prices.I mistook labour for labour power. Labour is not a commodity and has no value, unlike labour power.

[Dave B]

iThat’s ok sympo You were in good company! Theories of Surplus Value, Marx 1861-3[Chapter III] Adam Smith The so called volume IV ……..It is Adam Smith’s great merit that it is just in the chapters of Book I (chapters VI, VII, VIII) where he passes from simple commodity exchange and its law of value to exchange between materialised and living labour, to exchange between capital and wage-labour, to the consideration of profit and rent in general—in short, to the origin of surplus-value—that he feels some flaw has emerged.  He senses that somehow—whatever the cause may be, and he does not grasp what it is—in the actual result the law is suspended: more labour is exchanged for less labour (from the labourer’s standpoint), less labour is exchanged for more labour (from the capitalist’s standpoint).  His merit is that he emphasises—and it obviously perplexes him—that with the accumulation of capital and the appearance….   https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1863/theories-surplus-value/ch03.htm  this was an interesting quotation as the vulgar Marxist like the famous professor Michael Henirich and his zombies said that simple commodity exchange [or simple commodity production- same thing] didn’t exist.

[Author]

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