Value-form

The value-form or form of value (German: Wertform)^[1] is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy.^[2] Marx's account of the value-form is differently adopted in later forms of Marxism,^[3] in the Frankfurt School^[4] and in post-Marxism.^[5] When social labor is split up into independent enterprises and organized capitalistically, its products take the form of an ensemble of commodities of diverse types, which face one another on the market.

Production and exchange are governed by ideas and facts expressible in the forms like:

20 yards of linen are worth one coat
20 yards of linen have an equivalent in one coat
20 yards of linen = one coat
20 yards of linen cost $100
The price of 20 yards of linen is $100
20 yards linen = $100

The formulae above are 'expressions of value' (Wertausdruck). Worth, price, and equivalent are said to be categories of bourgeois life. Items that enter on one side or the other, here linen, coat and dollar, are said thereby to have different specific value-forms. A thing may have a value-form in the imagination – e.g. in the reasoning of a weaver who weaves 20 yards of linen with a view to getting a coat, thinking "20 yards of linen are worth one coat" or in a firm's attaching prices to its products (prices that may or may not be accepted). (An item with a price tag attached has thereby entered the price form in imagination.) But things can also be said to enter these forms objectively, as when it is simply a fact that e.g.

About 20 yards linen are worth one coat
The price of 20 yards of linen is about $100

The value-forms are social forms of a product of labor as organized asocially, privately and capitalistically. If the breakfast menu of a capitalistic restaurant chain reads:

Toast (two slices) = $1

then toast has assumed a value form as a product of capitalistically associated labor. But in a household, e.g. when feeding the children, the work of making toast – the same 'useful labor' – is associated differently. No such thought will enter the mind of the toast-maker, who will think directly of the children's needs. Toast will not assume a form of value.

The value forms are also 'forms of appearance' (German: Erscheinungsform). The agents work with them, judge in terms of them, and in a sense measure things with them. The capitalistic organization of life operates through this 'appearance' of itself to its bearers. The value-form of a commodity contrasts with its physical features as a 'use value' or good – e.g. as a means of (further) production or as a means of life.^[6] The physical characteristics of a commodity are directly observable, and they enter into its direct use, but its social form is not thus perceptible nor inherent in the thing.^[7]

Narrating the paradoxical oddities and metaphysical niceties of ordinary things when they become instruments of trade, Marx seeks to provide a brief morphology of the category of economic value as such—what its substance really is, the forms which this substance takes, and how its magnitude is determined or expressed. He analyzes the forms of value in the first instance^[8] by considering the meaning of the value-relationship that exists between two quantities of commodities.

^ In English, one would normally say "the form of value", "the form that value takes" or "the form in which value is expressed" but the expression "value-form" is often used, because of the specific concept that Marx had in mind.
^ Samezō Kuruma, Marx's Theory of the Genesis of Money. How, Why, and Through What is a Commodity Money? Leiden: Brill, 2018.
^ Costas Lapavitsas, Social foundations of money, markets and credit. London: Routledge, 2003; Simon Mohun, "Value, Value Form and Money", in Simon Mohun (ed.), Debates in Value Theory. Macmillan: London, 1994; Alfredo Saad-Filho, The value of Marx. London: Routledge, 2002, section 2.2.
^ Hans-Georg Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform, 2nd. edition. Freiburg: ça ira Verlag, 2011. Riccardo Bellofiore and Tommaso Redolfi Riva, "Hans-Georg Backhaus: the critique of premonetary theories of value and the perverted forms of economic reality." In: Beverly Best et al. (eds.), The Sage handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. London: Sage, 2018, pp. 386-401.
^ Neil Larsen, Mathias Nilges, Josh Robinson, and Nicholas Brown (eds.), Marxism and the Critique of Value. Chicago: MCM Publishing, 2014.[1] [2]
^ Helmut Brentel, Soziale Form und ökonomisches Objekt. Studien zum Gegenstands- und Methodenverständnis der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 1989. Hoon Hong, "Marx's value forms and Hayek's rules: a reinterpretation in the light of the dichotomy between physis and nomos." Cambridge Review of Economics, Vol. 26, No. 5, September 2002, pp. 613-635.
^ "What I proceed from is the simplest social form in which the product of labour presents itself in contemporary society, and this is the "commodity." This I analyse, initially in the form in which it appears. Here I find that on the one hand in its natural form it is a thing for use, alias a use-value; on the other hand, a bearer of exchange-value, and from this point of view it is itself an "exchange-value." Further analysis of the latter shows me that exchange-value is merely a "form of appearance," an independent way of presenting the value contained in the commodity, and then I start on the analysis of the latter... the concrete social form of the product of labour, the "commodity," is, on the one hand, use-value and on the other, "value," not exchange value, since the mere form of appearance is not its own content." — Karl Marx, Notes on Adolph Wagner's "Lehrbuch der politischen Ökonomie, 1879.[3]
^ "The individual commodity viewed as the product, the actual elementary component of capital that has been generated and reproduced, differs then from the individual commodity with which we began, and which we regarded as an autonomous article, as the precondition [[[German language|German]]: Voraussetzung] of capital formation." - Karl Marx, "Results of the immediate process of production", in: Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Penguin 1976, p. 966 (translation corrected).

[1] In English, one would normally say "the form of value", "the form that value takes" or "the form in which value is expressed" but the expression "value-form" is often used, because of the specific concept that Marx had in mind.

[2] Samezō Kuruma, Marx's Theory of the Genesis of Money. How, Why, and Through What is a Commodity Money? Leiden: Brill, 2018.

[3] Costas Lapavitsas, Social foundations of money, markets and credit. London: Routledge, 2003; Simon Mohun, "Value, Value Form and Money", in Simon Mohun (ed.), Debates in Value Theory. Macmillan: London, 1994; Alfredo Saad-Filho, The value of Marx. London: Routledge, 2002, section 2.2.

[4] Hans-Georg Backhaus, Dialektik der Wertform, 2nd. edition. Freiburg: ça ira Verlag, 2011. Riccardo Bellofiore and Tommaso Redolfi Riva, "Hans-Georg Backhaus: the critique of premonetary theories of value and the perverted forms of economic reality." In: Beverly Best et al. (eds.), The Sage handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. London: Sage, 2018, pp. 386-401.

[5] Neil Larsen, Mathias Nilges, Josh Robinson, and Nicholas Brown (eds.), Marxism and the Critique of Value. Chicago: MCM Publishing, 2014.[1] [2]

[6] Helmut Brentel, Soziale Form und ökonomisches Objekt. Studien zum Gegenstands- und Methodenverständnis der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien, 1989. Hoon Hong, "Marx's value forms and Hayek's rules: a reinterpretation in the light of the dichotomy between physis and nomos." Cambridge Review of Economics, Vol. 26, No. 5, September 2002, pp. 613-635.

[7] "What I proceed from is the simplest social form in which the product of labour presents itself in contemporary society, and this is the "commodity." This I analyse, initially in the form in which it appears. Here I find that on the one hand in its natural form it is a thing for use, alias a use-value; on the other hand, a bearer of exchange-value, and from this point of view it is itself an "exchange-value." Further analysis of the latter shows me that exchange-value is merely a "form of appearance," an independent way of presenting the value contained in the commodity, and then I start on the analysis of the latter... the concrete social form of the product of labour, the "commodity," is, on the one hand, use-value and on the other, "value," not exchange value, since the mere form of appearance is not its own content." — Karl Marx, Notes on Adolph Wagner's "Lehrbuch der politischen Ökonomie, 1879.[3]

[8] "The individual commodity viewed as the product, the actual elementary component of capital that has been generated and reproduced, differs then from the individual commodity with which we began, and which we regarded as an autonomous article, as the precondition [[[German language|German]]: Voraussetzung] of capital formation." - Karl Marx, "Results of the immediate process of production", in: Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I, Penguin 1976, p. 966 (translation corrected).

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