Arbeitswert

Arbeitswert, or labor value, is a central concept in classical political economy and Marxist theory. It denotes the value of a commodity as the amount of socially necessary labor time required for its production. The idea rests on distinguishing use value from exchange value and argues that the value of goods is determined by the social labor embodied in them rather than by their immediate utility.

In the classical view, economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo attributed value to the labor input involved in production. Karl Marx extended the concept within the labor theory of value, arguing that surplus value arises when workers’ labor creates more value than is paid in wages; this surplus is appropriated by capitalists through the exchange of goods and money.

In practice, Arbeitswert is a theoretical construct: market prices can diverge from the calculated social labor value due to changes in supply and demand, technology, and capital. The labor theory of value thus serves as a framework for analyzing capitalist production, exploitation, and distribution, rather than a precise empirical measure of price.

Critics, especially from the marginalist and neoclassical schools, argue that value is subjective and determined by marginal utility, not by labor input. Today, the term remains primarily used in discussions of the history of economic thought, classical economics, and Marxist analysis, rather than in mainstream microeconomics.