Macroeconomic, Monetary and Class-based: Marx’s Theory of Value Beyond New and Old Interpretations

After briefly reconstructing the debate that has developed around Marx’s theory of value since the beginning of the XXth century, this work discusses the contributions by Claudio Napoleoni and especially Augusto Graziani, comparing them with other influential interpretations proposed since the 1980s. In particular, we first address Napoleoni’s reflections on the (alleged) fatal consequences of the ‘failure’ of the so-called transformation of values into prices for Marx’s theory of exploitation. Then, we confront this view with Augusto Graziani’s reflection, according to which the Marxian theory of value could be ‘rehabilitated’ precisely as a macroeconomic theory of capitalist exploitation, where the microeconomic determination of relative prices remains in the background. In doing so, the contribution also explores the (in)consistency between Graziani’s theory and the ‘New Interpretation’ first and independently proposed by Lipietz, Duménil and Foley. Finally, a simple formal ‘reconstruction’ of Marxian theory, explicitly accounting for the monetary and class nature of capitalism in a credit-money context, is presented.