Marx’s Theory of Value, Technological Change and the Forces of Nature

Abstract

Marx’s value theory is at the core of historical materialism that explains the organizing of the capitalist economic process. The theory of value condenses the social relations of production that oppose capital to labor, turning political economy into an objective science, based on the concept of socially necessary labor time. However, while Nature is not a determinant process in the formation of value, technological change has brought about the indeterminacy of social labor time. Valuing the complex ecological, cultural, and technological processes that support a sustainable economic process calls for a new theory to integrate economic, technologic, ecologic, and cultural processes; to grasp the antagonisms between the techno-economic regime and environmental rationality that integrate multiple cultural imaginaries that determine the social appropriation of Nature.