Changes in Critical Theory Interpretations of Marx’s Value Theory

Abstract

In this chapter, Rockwell shows that Marcuse’s 1950s interpretations of the Grundrisse affirmed the unity of Marx’s theories, while later Jürgen Habermas argued that Marx’s social theory, his concept of the labor theory of value, and technological production in the Grundrisse and Capital, represented, respectively, revisionist and orthodox versions of labor and society, necessity and freedom. Habermas later extended his argument: There were conflicting “unofficial” and “official” versions of Marx’s concept of value and social integration in the late Marx’s two most important texts, and such a conflict was extant within the Grundrisse. There were important convergences with Habermas’s interpretations in Marcuse’s 1960s’ questioning of the viability of Marx’s labor theory of value in a technologically developed economy with a declining role for direct labor.