The Misinterpretation of Marx’s Theory of Value BY STEVE KEEN § 1 Introduction The “technical” interpretation of Marx’s theory of value, which asserted that the concept of use-value played no role in his economics, has in recent years been shown to be ill-founded. In particular, Rosdolsky 1977 and Groll 1980 have established the importance that Marx attached to the concept of use-value in his theory of value, while I have shown that the use-value is an essential component of his analysis of the commodity, and that when properly applied, that analysis invalidates the labor theory of value (Keen 1993). This modern re-evaluation of Marx raises the puzzle of how the traditional view developed in the first place. Hilferding aside, the answer does not paint a complimentary picture of the scholarship of either friend or foe of Marx in the debate over his theory of value. 2 Wagner Though the main proponents of the “technical” interpretation of Marx were the professedly Marxian scholars Sweezy, Meek and Dobb, this school in fact had its genesis in critiques of Marx by conservative opponents. The first of these was the “professorial socialist” Adolph Wagner, who argued in his 1879 Grundlegung that Marx had eliminated use-value from his analysis. Marx was aware of this interpretation of Capital, and his Marginal Notes on A. Wagner (Marx, 1879—hereafter referred to as Wagner) constitute a polemic against it. After dismissing Wagner’s conclusion that value is only use-value as “`driveling’”, he presented his dialectical vision of the commodity as a union of use-value and exchange-value, and then forcefully observed that only an obscurantist, who has not understood a word of Capital, can conclude: Because Marx, in a note to the first edition of Capital, overthrows all the German professorial twaddle on `use-value’ in general,…—therefore, use-value does not play any role in his work.… (ibid, p. 198-99) Marx provided an important clue to understanding the statement he referred to above in The Contribution (Marx 1859, p. 28) that use-value, while outside economic analysis in general, belongs to the sphere of political economy only when it is itself a determinate form. He explained that “Whoever satisfies his own need through his product, does create a use-value, but not a commodity. In order to produce a commodity, he must not only produce a use-value, but use-value for others, social use-value. So use-value itself—as the use-value of the `commodity’—possesses an historically specific character.” (Wagner, p. 199). At the end of that same paragraph he provided a commentary on the method by which he derived the § Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Volume 15, Number 2, Fall 1993. The History of Economics Society. University of New South Wales, Australia. Email address Steve.Keen@UNSW.EDU.AU. The author would like to thank J.E. King and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and criticisms of earlier drafts of this article.