The labour theory of value, risk and the rate of profit

Steven Toms

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, 2010, vol. 21, issue 1, 96-103

Abstract: The paper extends Marx's law of value to include the effects of risk. It shows how risk has its origins in the labour process and is transferred between labour and capital on an unequal basis and between capitals on a zero sum basis. An empirical test is then presented, which shows that the employment of labour increases risk from the point of view of the investing capitalist. The conclusion is that the employment of labour is a curate's egg from capital's point of view. On the one hand it is essential for the production of sustainable surplus value and therefore for competitive advantage and capital accumulation. On the other hand employment of labour renders such accumulation inherently risky and therefore commensurately more costly to the rational capitalist investor.

Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235409000938
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:crpeac:v:21:y:2010:i:1:p:96-103

DOI: 10.1016/j.cpa.2006.01.017

Access Statistics for this article

CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING is currently edited by Marcia Annisette, Christine Cooper and Yves Gendron

More articles in CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().