looking for "law of value" references

[Shane Mage]

>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

Hi Jim,

The basic reference you're looking for is in Marx's letter to Dr. Kugelmann
dated July 11, 1868:

"Even if there were no chapter on value in my book, the analysis of the real
relationships which I give would contain the proof and demonstration of the
real value relation...the mass of products corresponding to the different
needs require different and quantitatively determined masses of the total
labor of society.  That this necessity of distributing social labor in definite
proportions cannot be done away with by the particular form of social
production, but can only change the form it assumes, is self-evident.
No natural laws can be done away with.  What can change, in changing
historical circumstances, is the form in which these laws operate.  And
the form in which this proportional division of labor operates, in a
state of society where the interconnection of social labor is manifested
in the private exchange of the individual products of labor, is precisely
the exchange-value of these products.  The science consists precisely
in working out how the law of value operates."

Shane Mage

"Thunderbolt steers all things."

Herakleitos of Ephesos, fr. 64