3rd World Congress on Marxism

Peking University,
School of Marxism
17-18 July 2021

I.I.Rubin and the fallacies of

old and new ‘Rubin schools’

Stavros Mavroudeas
Dept. of Social Policy
Panteion University
Athens, Greece
e-mail: s.mavroudeas@panteion.gr
Web: https://stavrosmavroudeas.wordpress.com
 MAIN POINTS

• Rubin’s contribution to Marxist Political Economy: a

constructive step with several contradictions
• The subsequent self-declared ‘Rubinists’ deformed
Rubin’s original approach and ended in circulationism
and the abandonment of the Marxist Labour Theory
of Value (LTV)
I. Rubin’s contribution to Marxist Political Economy
• Early Soviet debates (1920s)
• A physicalist understanding of (labour) values predominated:
 Value was considered as simply the expenditure of labour
in production, devoid of any social content
 Thus, Marx’s LTV was not distinguished from Ricardo’s
• Rubin departed from this view:
 Emphasised the significance of Marx’s dialectical
methodology and especially his materialist dialectics of
content (essence) and form (appearance)
 Differentiated Marx’s Abstract LTV from Ricardo’s
Embodied LTV:
More realistic but also more sophisticated analysis
Emphasis on the social dimension
• Ricardo:
Couldn’t distinguish between value and its form (as
exchange-value) because of his erroneous insistence to
identify value and price directly
neglected that the law of value (the determination of
prices by values) is not a direct but a mediated (through
several stages) process
considered labour (and its expenditure, value) as simply
a physical-technical activity without social dimension
(labourers are socially passive)
• Marx:
values determine prices, but prices would only
accidentally and in exceptional cases be identical to
their determining values
the formation of values not only a technical but also a
social process (labourers engage in class struggle)
• Ricardo’s Embodied LTV:
Value detn. directly Price
 There are no intermediate stages between Value and Price
 Hence, price only accidentally deviates from value
 Value is normalized on the basis of physical and technical
data (no social dimension)
• Marx’s Abstract LTV:
Value detn. indirectly Price
 There are intermediate stages between Value and Price:
The content of value (labour) is expressed (and mystified) via
value-forms (prices of production, exchange-values which
ultimately are monetary prices)
 Hence, price systematically deviates from value
 Value is normalized on the basis of physical and technical
data (there is the social dimension)
• Thus, Rubin declared that value is determined in production
(through a technical but also social process) and then is
expressed in circulation through different forms of
appearance (exchange-value, price). The ultimate expression
is monetary price.
• Rubin’s major work: ‘Essays in Marx’s Theory of Value’, 3
editions with subsequent corrections in each of them
• Ensuing debate: Rubin was accused of circulationism (e.g.,
value is constituted in the sphere of circulation (and not in
production) via the exchange of commodities with money
• Rubin vehemently rejected this accusation in the subsequent
editions of the ‘Essays in Marx’s Theory of Value’: value is
generated in production and is expressed in circulation.
• Rubin’s contribution remained unknown in the West till the
1970s when it was translated and influenced greatly the
Value Debate between Marxists and neo-Ricardians
• Neo-Ricardians maintained that Marx’s Value theory was
severely flawed and that P.Sraffa’s approach (deriving prices
of production directly from physical quantities and thus
making values redundant) explained better capitalism’s
modus operandi
• Marxists rightfully rejected the neo-Ricardian technicism and
argued that Marx’s Value theory showed that capitalism’s
essential dynamics cannot be understood without considering
their social (i.e., class struggle) nature and that Marx’s LTV –
contrary to the physicalism of Ricardo and Classical Political
Economy – focused on this
 II. The old ‘Rubin School’
• A spillover of the Value Debate: the emergence of a ‘Rubin
School’ (e.g. Benetti & Cartelier (1980), Deleplace (1979), De
Vroey (1981)) that, in order to confront Sraffian technicism,
resorted in directly identifying abstract labour with money
• The qualitative aspect of value theory was divorced from the
quantitative one; and while the former was prioritised, the
latter was undermined, e.g. Benetti & Cartelier:
 values and prices are ‘incommensurable’ factors
 Marx was wrong in establishing equations of the type ‘sum
of prices equals sum of values’
• The old ‘Rubin School’ ended in discarding value and
substituting it with money
• Rubin explicitly disagreed with these erroneous views.
• He affirmed that value can be studied without money having
been previously established (IRubin 1978:36).
• He condemned the view that value is created in circulation,
stating that ‘abstract labour and value are created or “come
about”, “become” in the process of direct production ... and
are only realised in the process of exchange’ (Rubin
(1978:125).
• Rubin (1973) upheld the dialectical relationship between the
‘immanent measure of value’ (labour) and the ‘external
measure of value’ (money) and he recognized the primacy of
the former.
• He rejected the view that the measure of value is established
in exchange relations and not in production relations.
Referring to the quantitative determination of abstract
labour, I.I.Rubin (1973:154) said that it is a misunderstanding
‘to admit that the social equalization of labor in the process
of exchange is carried out in isolation of dependence on
production (for example, the length, intensity, length of
training for a given level of qualification, and so on), and
thus, the social equalization would lack any regularity since it
would be exclusively determined by market spontaneity’
• Marx has also condemned the circulationist views of value in
his critique of Franklin
 Franklin (1836) was one of the first theorists to propose
labour, instead of the precious metals, as the measure of
value. However, his theory of abstract labour mistook
money to be the direct incarnation of abstract labour
 (Marx 1987a:296-7): ‘Franklin, on the contrary, considers
that the value of shoes, minerals, yarn, paintings, etc., is
determined by abstract labour which has no particular
quality and can thus be measured only in terms of
quantity. But since he does not explain that the labour
contained in exchange value is abstract universal social
labour, which is brought about by the universal alienation
of individual labour, he is bound to mistake money for the
direct embodiment of this alienated labour.’
 III. The new ‘Rubinists’

• The recent discovery of another Rubin (2018) book (Essays

on Marx’s Theory of Money) intervenes in a newer
debate.

• This book is a long manuscript penned in the period 1926-

1928; thus, overlapping with the editions of his Essays on
Marx’s Theory of Value. Hence, they are not Rubin’s final
words.

• Several authors and prominently among them the German

so-called Neue Lekture (NL) school maintain that Marx had
a ‘monetary theory of value’ (e.g. Heinrich (1999)).

• NL merges the ‘value-form’ theories (e.g. T. Smith, C.

Arthur, directly identified with the old ‘Rubin school’) with
the Frankfurt School tradition (G. Backhaus, H. Reichelt)
• ‘Value-form’ theories:

 while claiming to reconstruct Marx’s theory, essentially

collapse it into mystified categories of pure form
without content

 consider Marx’s socially necessary labour-time as

‘Ricardian rust’ and thus discard it altogether as the
content of value

 they end up with either abandoning value altogether or

directly identifying it with money.
• The second version (that is, the direct identification of value
with money) is predominant in the NL theorists that control
the new MEGA under German supervision.
• They argue that Marx has a monetary theory of value; despite
Marx’s explicit critique of Franklin’s similar view.
• In order to sustain this analytically and empirically false
claim, the NL disputes the Marxist LTV and also its monetary
theory (especially its analysis of credit). They try to enlist
Marx himself in their perspective by attributing the Marxian
LTV to Engels’ manipulation of Marx’s thought
• NL’s approach is identical to that of the old ‘Rubin School’
and espouses without pretexts circulationism.
• Heinrich (1999: 242) rejects the idea that money is an
expression of the ‘immanent quantity of value’ and argues
that money is the only possible form in which the value of a
commodity exists. He adds that ‘there can be no form in
which value is manifested independently of exchange’.
• On the contrary, Marx argues that it is not money that renders
commodities commensurable.
 Commodities are commensurable because they contain
objective human social labor expended (SNLT).
 SNLT constitutes their value and it is their immanent
measure of value.
 It is expressed, through a series of mediation, in their
external measure of value, that is, money.
 The external measures derive from the immanent measure
and, thus, it can neither stand on its own nor substitute
the latter.
• The new ‘Rubinists’ enlist Rubin’s last book as a revered
standard-bearer of their approach.

• They imply that Rubin’s Essays on Marx’s Theory of

Money differ essentially from his Essays on Marx’s Theory of
Value in the sense that in the former Rubin adopted more
radical views and departed further from classical Marxist
conceptions.

• However, the fact that the Essays on Marx’s Theory of

Money were written during the same period of the subsequent
reformulations and editions of the Essays on Marx’s Theory
of Value negates this claim.
• Rubin also clearly rejected the monetary theory of value.
The first chapter of his Essays on Marx’s Theory of Money
declares that it complements the Essays on Marx’s Theory
of Value as the theory of value precedes the theory of
money. There the theory of value is distinguished from the
theory of money and the former is posited as a prerequisite of
the latter
 IV. BY WAY OF CONCLUSION

• Both older and newer ‘Rubin schools’ misinterpret Rubin’s

work and also fail to comprehend the actual workings of the
capitalist economy.

• The Essays on Marx’s Theory of Money are a

continuation of the Essays on Marx’s Theory of Value.

• Therefore, Rubin is not a value-form theorist in the sense

that ‘Rubinists’ believe (that is considering value a form-
without-content).

• Old and new ‘Rubinists’ misinterpret not only Marx but also
Rubin. Simultaneously, they fail to understand the modus
operandi of the capitalist system.