"If Marx's goal was to explain prices, he should have simply skipped volumes I and II of CAPITAL (as, I believe, economist Paul Samuelson has said). But value had other purposes for him. I think the main concept of the entire book is "commodity fetishism," referring to the way in which market exchange (and commodity production) hides and distorts the appearance of the societal relations of production, specifically class relations. People who live within the system typically see the social relations between the various producers as being nothing but the exchange of things, perhaps mediated by individual buyers and sellers. Neoclassical economics takes this fetishized vision and runs with it.
Value, as I see it, represents a tool -- a method of abstraction -- for cutting through the fetishized fog, to reveal the societal nature of capitalism as a whole. (It's a tool of _sociological_ analysis.) Value -- socially necessary abstract labor-time -- represents _contributions_ to the wealth of the hidden (latent) community of producers that comes from the production and sale of a commodity. That community doesn't rule the world, since capitalism and its social system of alienation (fetishism) does -- but the solidarity of workers still represents a potential."
It this is really true and on target. Thanks for articulating it....
Joanna