We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
In a recent article Robert Paul Wolff has argued that Marx's theory of capitalist exploitation is incorrect, in that its ground is the premiss that labor is the source of all value.1 This, of course, is a well-rehearsed objection to Marx, but Wolff gives it a novel twist. He notes that the defense of this premise in the opening pages of Capital is inadequate, but he is not troubled by this ‘bad argument,’ for he sees Marx's real argument as something else: the (implicit) claim that unless labor is the source of all value, an adequate account of profit is impossible. In other words Marx is seen to be making a transcendental argument: an inquiry into the conditions for the possibility of profit. Wolff proceeds to argue that Marx goes astray here, but not so far astray that a valid transcendental argument, faithful to Marx's essential insight, cannot be charted.
1 Wolff, Robert Paul ‘A Critique and Reinterpretation of Marx's Labor Theory of Value,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs, 2 (1981) 89–120Google Scholar
2 Bertrand Russell, for example, maintained that Marx's reliance on the labor theory of value invalidated his account of exploitation; Joan Robinson agrees with Russell that the labor theory of value is ‘metaphysical,’ but finds Marx's notion of exploitation a useful concept, independent of value theory; orthodox Marxists insist on the validity of both the labor theory of value and Marx's account of exploitation. Cf. Russell, Bertrand Freedom Versus Organization (New York: W.W. Norton 1934). 203 ff.Google Scholar: Robinson, Joan An Essay on Marxian Economics.(London: Macmillan 1942), 20Google Scholar; Sweezy, Paul Theroy of Capitalist Development (New York: Monthly Review Press 1970)Google Scholar
3 For Marx's notorious ‘bad argument’ see Capital, vol. l (New York: international Publishers 1967), 36-8.
5 Wolff, 110
6 I would argue that a close reading of the text, particularly the ‘bad argument,’ supports this claim.
7 It is noteworthy that when Marx lays out that paradox, he asks, not how is profit possible, but how is capital possible.
8 Marx, Capital, 168-9
