BEYOND PRICE AND USE-VALUE

Abstract

Mainstream economists have long argued that the labour theory of value cannot explain price-formation. In response, Marxists have argued that mainstream economics is fixated on abstract mathematical problems which mystify social reality and obscure the social relationships at the heart of the real economy. Marxist political economists have proposed formal solutions to the price-formation problem, but the deeper issue on which my article will focus is the way in which price signals cannot communicate the information that economic agents need to make decisions which are consistent with the life-support capacity of the natural world and the social interests of workers. While Marxists typically distinguish a socialist economy from a capitalist one on the basis of the former’s commitment to production for the sake of need-satisfaction, needs are typically defined in terms of use-values. I will argue that this identification fails to distinguish between needs as universal life-requirements and needs as means to the completion of any project whatsoever. Unless needs are defined in terms of life-requirements, then even a socialist society can continue to undermine the natural conditions of life-support and exhaust human potential in meaningless cycles of consumption.