The Key to Marx's Value Theory

Abstract

The first volume of Les “Senders Escarpes” de Karl Marx, by Paul-Dominique Dognin, Editions du Cerf (vol I 47F; vol II 35F) contains the German text of the original (first edition) version of Chapter I of Capital and of its appendix, as well as French translations of them, together with the fourth edition version (in French translation only). Dognin’s own critical commentary on these texts makes up the second volume of his book.The first edition version of Chapter I differs considerably from the fourth, and from the standard French and English translations. The differences relate especially to the presentation of the distinction between “value” and “exchange-value”. Dognin argues that these changes are symptomatic of fundamental difficulties in Marx’s theory of value, difficulties which he analyses at length in his commentary. Although there is little that is original in Dognin’s criticisms—they will be familiar to anyone acquainted with Bohm-Bawerk’s critique —I think he is right to highlight the importance of the value/exchange-value distinction. In my view, however, Marx’s distinction is symptomatic, not of contradictions within his theory of value, but of contradictions between that theory and that of classical economics: by means of this distinction, Marx makes a definite break with classical economics and inaugurates a new science of his own. Seen in this light, the value/ exchange-value distinction is the key to Marx’s value theory as a whole, and hence is much more important than the use-value/exchange-value distinction to which so much attention is usually given. It is, indeed, Dognin’s failure to grasp the nature of the value/exchange-value distinction which vitiates his critique of Marx, a critique which is, however, quite standard in the neoclassical tradition. Let us, then, look at the distinction itself in some detail.