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Lecture 2 of 15 · The History of Economic Thought

What is Marx's Theory of Value and its main flaw?

Murray N. Rothbard · 1:59

What is Marx's Theory of Value and its main flaw? by Murray N. Rothbard is a free audio lecture (1:59) at freecapitalists.org, part of the 15-lecture series The History of Economic Thought.

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0:00If you read Das Kapital, first volume, forget it, I mean, there's all the contradictions in the first and third volume of my life, just read the first volume, the first three pages, and it'll tell you all. He starts off by saying price, product, exchange at certain prices. What determines these prices, what determines these values? And he says, well, what is it? First of all, he says values are equal. The first mistake, the typical object of this mistake in the sense of Ricardian, etc., etc., and being Ricardian, is since the price of something is equal to something else, since the Wonder Bread costs $1.09 a loaf, this means that somehow the loaf and the bread are of equal value, and the bread and the money are of equal value, or something else is $1.09 a loaf that's $1.09 of equal value. He immediately says there's an equality of value. That's the first mistake since we know Austrian subjectivism is the fact there's any exchange at all means there must be an inequality of value.

0:53Both parties value the product unequally. In other words, if I buy a newspaper for a quarter, it's not that I value the quarter equally with a newspaper since a newsstand deal doesn't value equally. Otherwise, why bother exchanging at all? What's the point of exchanging? It's about the same thing anyway. So, the point is that both have a reverse inequality. I value the newspaper getting the Washington Post or whatever higher than I do my quarter, and the new standard, of course, values a quarter higher than keeping the Washington Post. And we have a double reverse inequality value. This creates the condition for exchange, for profitable exchange for both parties, for both parties' benefit. So, there's no equality of value. Quite the opposite. There's a double inequality. It's the first problem in Marx's formulation. Then he says, well, they have equality of value between these two things which have the same price, and so what is equal about them? What is there in these things that are equal?

1:43They're not of equal weight, that can't be it, not of equal volume, that can't be it. If something works for the thing, it must be equal quantity of labor, after, you know, a certain next to Jesus. And at that point, you really don't have to read the rest of it, because you have about four or five fallacy little pile on top of each other.

Part of a series

The History of Economic Thought

15 lectures, 0.4 hours. See the full series or subscribe by RSS.

Speakers: Murray N. Rothbard.

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The recording runs 1:59.
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Murray N. Rothbard delivered it, in the series The History of Economic Thought.
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It is lecture 2 of 15 in The History of Economic Thought, which is free to stream or download in full.