Rakesh writes, in part, one does not need such a labor theory of value to argue against the injustice of profit income or the human unfreedom implicit in private ownership of the means of production, Ajit and Gil both seem to be saying as they reduce Marx's basic critique of political economy and theory of surplus value to ethics It's news to me that I do this, though of course Marx' s critique necessarily contains a normative component (else in what sense is it a "critique"--of esthetics, perhaps?). My point is just that you don't need a labor theory of value, understood as a notion that commodity prices are somehow "regulated" by underlying labor values, in order to advance Marx's critique, and in some cases reliance on labor value theory is counterproductive. Gil
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