If Profit Is the Answer, What Should Be the Question? Income from Capital and the Labour Theory of Value

Abstract

Exploitation is an uncomfortable idea, and it is unsurprising that many people would prefer not to think or talk about it. In this chapter, I will attempt to show that no alternative explanation of profit to the one provided by the Labour Theory of Value — or, in other words, no explanation which attempts to avoid this unpalatable idea of exploitation — is in fact adequate. Chapter 6 will then be devoted to the Marxian theory of prices, the Sraffian critique of it and the precise relation between the Marxian and the Sraffian approaches to the economy.