The Labour Theory of Value, Simple Commodity Production and the Transformation Problem

Abstract

This article revaluates contemporary criticism of Marx’s value theory. Key tenets of Marx’s value theory are widely rejected. The use of labour (abstract or otherwise) as a standard of value is deemed ‘mystical’ or ‘magical’. The logical-historical method is false. The notion of simple commodity production a mistake. The solution to the transformation of values into prices of production mathematically incorrect. The theory of surplus value is superfluous. Okshio’s theorem refutes Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall. This article shows that the assumptions necessary to sustain this critique amount to a rejection of human production in general and capitalist production in particular.