Marx versus Walras on Labour Exchange

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Abstract: This paper compares Léon Walras’s and Marx’s thoughts on labour exchange, thereby illuminating the latter’s perspective that can lead to a forceful counterargument to the neoclassical principle of labour exchange, for which the former affords a foundation. Both Walras and Marx distinguish between labour ability as a factor of production and labour as its service, but exhibit a striking contrast in their explanations of the distinction. 　 Walras’s distinction between ‘personal faculties’ and labour never attempts to reveal the peculiarities of the relationship they share. Walras essentially equates the relationship between the two with that between non-human factors and their respective services by stripping the former of human elements. This not only allows labour exchange to be incorporated into Walras’s general equilibrium system but also provides the groundwork for its neoclassical principle, which, on the basis of marginal theory, assumes work conditions to be determinable through the stylised market adjustment of the demand and supply of labour on each entrepreneur’s and worker’s maximisation behaviour. 　 In contrast, especially in his pre-Capital writings, Marx underlines the worker’s subjectivity in deciding her labour performance. This implies that the type and intensity of time-unit labour varies depending on the worker’s will and the constraints upon it. Accentuating the particular characteristics of the relationship between labour power and labour in this way, Marx’s arguments lead to the invalidation of the neoclassical principle of labour exchange and rationalise the intervention of socio-political factors represented by the labour-capital class struggle in the determination of work conditions. Thus, this study focuses on the potential of Marx’s labour power-labour distinction independent of his exploitation theory-the basis of a weighty refutation of the neoclassical system. JEL classification numbers: B 13, B 14.

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