Marx’s Law of value and the ontology of labour: a Castoriadian critical point of view

Richard Sobel ()
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Richard Sobel: University of Lille and CLERSE – Centre Lillois d’Études et de Recherches sociologiques et Économiques (UMR 8019 CNRS) (France)

The Journal of Philosophical Economics, 2020, vol. 13, issue 2, 116-136

Abstract: In Marx’s thought, is ‘law of value’ a particular law of capitalism (historicism) or a general law of the economy (naturalism)? To clarify this ambiguity, this article proposes to employ the social ontology of Cornélius Castoriadis. For it, ‘labour’ is not a substance, but a recent historical creation through which, finally, the capitalist mode of production expresses a fundamental truth about all society’s way of being. From this perspective, we explore some consequences of this deconstruction for the theory of value as current neo-Marxist approaches may employ it today in their economic analyses.

Keywords: law of value. naturalism; work; social ontology; Marx; Castoriadis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bus:jphile:v:13:y:2020:i:2:n:5

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