Marxism, Value and the Dialectic of Labour

Abstract

For Marx the question of value was inseparably linked to the question of the dialectic. Orthodox Marxism, whose mainstream originated in the 2nd and 3rd Internationals, has long held to a reified conception of dialectic in which the categories of alienated labour and fetishism were largely descriptive, and therefore marginal. By contrast, Marx's dialectic identified the Hegelian category of essence with human productive activity in its value form, thus locating the source of its movement in human practice. In its identification of essence with value, that current of value form analysis known as ‘systematic dialectic’ has in turn reified the dialectic.