Rethinking the determination of the value of labor power

Abstract

This article critically examines the received wisdom on the value of labor power that posits the workers’ material reproduction and the class struggle as two independent factors that determine the bundle of wage-goods consumed by the working class. It shows that this reading has no solid textual basis on Marx’s writings. Furthermore, it argues that it rests on a problematic separation of the actual immanent unity between materiality and social form in the capitalist mode of production.