Labour values and energy values: some developments on the common substance of value since 1867

Wilfried Parys

The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 2018, vol. 25, issue 5, 1052-1080

Abstract: Marx’s Das Kapital (1867) singled out labour as the common substance of value in all commodities. Costanza (1980) in Science chose energy and propagated energy values (a century after Engels criticised Podolinsky on energy). Mainstream economists quickly questioned Marx’s logic. Pareto advocated simultaneous equations, unaware of their use by Mühlpfordt and Dmitriev. Contributions by Charasoff and Potron were also overlooked. Already in 1927, Leontief and Sraffa knew how to replace labour values by other commodity values. Generalising Sraffa’s subsystems and using “percentage formulas” for price-value deviations, I discuss some empirical results for labour or energy theories of value.

Date: 2018
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DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2018.1523939

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