The campaign against the Bank of England’s ongoing theft of Venezuelan gold is gaining support across the labour movement and beyond, writes MATT WILLGRESS
What’s the difference between labour (work) and labour power?
The MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY explores one of Marxism’s key concepts
The new Prime Minister must abandon decades of automatic support for US foreign policy, which makes us all less safe, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP
Claims that Nicaragua has abolished elections followed a headline that stripped Daniel Ortega’s remarks of their historical and political context. The full speech tells a different story, says BECCA RENK FOSTER
Media Lens at 25: David Cromwell and David Edwards reflect on a quarter-century of media criticism, explaining why independent journalism is more important than ever
MAT COWARD introduces some of the electoral oddballs of the political fringe who remain one of the liveliest features of British democracy, despite efforts to abolish them
by Weyman Bennett and Maz’s family
THE labour theory of value states that the exchange value of commodities (goods and services) is proportional to the amount of socially necessary labour (work) embodied in them.
The qualification socially necessary is important because we have to assume that all work is done with the average levels of equipment and skill of any given time.
This law of value (as Marx always called the labour theory) is the foundation of his political economy. So it’s natural that many people think it was Marx himself who discovered the law.
Similar stories
Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
ALEX HALL is fascinated by a lucid and historically convincing account of how rent has dominated capitalist economies from feudalism to modernity
MARTIN GRAHAM welcomes, with reservations, a scholarly addition to the unfinished business of understanding how capital works on a world scale
PHILIP ENGLISH says military spending will not create the jobs young people need — instead, build an economy based around needs, not profit