Go to the index of Capital, vol.3 where you will find a bunch of entries under "law of value", beginning with Engels' 17 page discussion of the law in the preface. The other references are one-page mentions of it scattered throughout the text by Marx. Or look in Value, Price and Profit a compilation in book form of two speeches Marx gave to the First International in 1865, that are a popularization of his views on the basics. There you find, after a discussion, of the factors that unfluence labor productivity his general statement of the law in its crudest form (p.35): "As a general law, therefore, we may set it down that: The values of commodities are directly as the times of labour employed in their production, and are inversely as the productive powers of the labour employed" (some further clarifications in Capital: socially necessary, abstract social labor of average skill and intensity). Then there is the appendix in Steedman, Marx After Sraffa that lists 33 quotes from vol.1 of Capital where Marx refers to some aspect of the meaning of value.
Or, to branch out a bit, check out Maurice Dobb, Theories of Value and Distribution Since Adam Smith, where he discusses, among lots of other things, Ricardo's search for an invariable measure of value (the search for a law as an invariant relationship) and Sraffa's "standard commodity". Or the Sraffa book itself, The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities.
RO
Barbara Laurence wrote:
>
> fellow and sister henwoodians.
> I'm looking for refernces in Marx and Marxist-type economic writings,
> articles or book section or chapters, whatever, on the "law of value." So
> far I've come up with little, Mandel's basic text for example doesn't note
> "law of value" in his index. I'm wondering if any of you folks know a
> citation or reference, that you might have run across some time, on or to
> "law of value," "value, law of," whatever. I'll greatly appreciate any
> help anyone can give me.
> Jim O'Connor