The Demise of the Marxian Law of Value? A Critique of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri

Abstract

This chapter does not offer a comprehensive analysis of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s work.¹ It only critiques their claim that the Marxian law of value is passé (Negri 1991; Hardt and Negri 1994, 2000, 2004, 2009). As this claim has been best espoused in Multitude (2004) and Commonwealth (2009), I shall focus principally on these titles. The next section, quoting from these two books, provides an account of this claim. The third section, argues, in agreement with Hardt and Negri, that certain sectors of the world economy, taken in isolation, undermine the law of value. However, the arguments of the section are radically different from those of Hardt and Negri, in being derived from Marx’s theory of value. The fourth section demonstrates that this tendency is only a partial reality and is neutralized by intensive and extensive global expansion of the domains of the law. The fifth section deals with the value-form that Hardt and Negri suppose has replaced the value-form that Marx described. This, allegedly, new value-form, they argue, is the representation of an immeasurable “common”. The section shows that Hardt and Negri’s construction of this allegedly new value-form is fraught with serious mistakes. To the extent, the section argues that valueless commons is exchanged with money, such money is rent, a component of surplus-value in the Marxian sense. The sixth section argues that Hardt and Negri fail to grasp the concept of surplus-value. The conclusions restate that the law of value is still the integrating principle of the global economy.