The Condition of Alienation and the Transformation of Value into Price in Karl Marx

Abstract

Using the philosophies of Louis Althusser and István Mészáros, this article seeks to interpret Marx’s theory of the transformation of value into price based on a philosophical view that emphasizes both the base/superstructure dialectic (Althusser) and alienation under capitalism (Mészáros). According to the logic of dialectical materialism, the economic base of the capitalist mode of production is determined by a historical dialectic (alienated labor) that produces an unsolvable contradiction with the capitalist imperatives of the superstructure. The alienation of the workers is perpetuated through their active subordination to the ideal and material power of the capitalist superstructure (including its ideal “law of value” which postulates the domination of exchange value over use value). They are led to believe that the profit-embedded prices of the commodities they produce have nothing to do with them. The illusion is that these prices are decided by an abstract “free market.” In reality, the laborers, due to their alienation, contribute directly to the formation of these prices by allowing the capitalists to freely compete with each other by lowering their respective “price of production.” There can be no profitable prices under capitalism without the contradictory condition of alienation perpetuated by the ideal power of the superstructure.