 The Emergence of the Law of Value in a Dynamic Simple Commodity EconomyReview of Political Economy, 2008, vol. 20, issue 3, 367-391 Abstract: A dynamic computational model of a simple commodity economy is examined and a theory of the relationship between commodity values, market prices and the efficient division of social labour is developed. The main conclusions are: (i) the labour value of a commodity is an attractor for its market price; (ii) market prices are error signals that function to allocate the available social labour between sectors of production; and (iii) the tendency of prices to approach labour values is the monetary expression of the tendency of a simple commodity economy to allocate social labour efficiently. The model demonstrates that, in the special case of simple commodity production, Marx's law of value can naturally emerge from multiple local exchanges and operate 'behind the backs' of actors solely via money flows that place budget constraints on their local evaluations of commodity prices, which are otherwise subjective and unconstrained. Date: 2008 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:revpoe:v:20:y:2008:i:3:p:367-391 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/09538250701661889 Access Statistics for this article Review of Political Economy is currently edited by Steve Pressman and Louis-Philippe Rochon More articles in Review of Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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