Abstract
This paper revisits the debate on the relevance of the labor theory of value for the anthropological task. It argues that the labor theory of value can creatively inform and reformulate in critical ways a variety of social issues addressed through anthropological lenses. The argument is sustained by two main exercises: first, a critical overview of the foundations of the labor theory of value outlines the reasons why it opened new grounds for anthropological and, more generally, for social-scientific enquiries. Second, a discussion of the key points of friction between scholarship that attempts to develop an “anthropological” theory of value as an end in itself and anthropological scholarship that resorts to the (labor) theory of value to critically inform research.
Highlights
The child everyone has inside: anthropology and the labor theory of valueLuis F
The labor theory of value took on different directions, and to this day remains a contested terrain of analysis
After the interventions of Marx, Engels, and those who contributed to the variegated Marxian corpus of critical scholarship, this theory facilitated the generation of additional questions about history, cultural production, and power. These were, and continue to be, anthropological questions, and the scenario created by the COVID-19 pandemic provides a propitious opportunity to reflect on why that is the case—it has brought out the child that everyone has inside. This special issue seeks to stimulate that reflection on how the labor theory of value can creatively inform and reformulate in critical ways a variety of social issues addressed through anthropological lenses—issues that range from Bitcoin production to the new agricultural “digital revolution” to tourism in the semi-peripheries of the world system
Summary
The child everyone has inside: anthropology and the labor theory of valueLuis F. Further examination of these commonalities soon reveals how social difference between these workers is (re) produced through the forms in which the society they work in distributes and hierarchizes their labor.
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