Abstract
The New Interpretation (NI) can be characterized as a set of general axioms and accounting identities involving labor time, prices, and money. Its generality permits a wide range of applications. It preserves the theory of exploitation but is not a comprehensive response to well-known critiques of Marxian theories of value and price. Conversely, Roberts’s Single System Interpretation (SSI) provides a comprehensive and consistent theory of commodity value and price of production on a labor time standard but purposely avoids a monetary interpretation. This article demonstrates that these differences obscure the common analytic core shared by both approaches. Identifying this common analytic core indicates clear but unrecognized convergence in some modern approaches to price and value. The core analytic properties of the NI are also found in the SSI and have been since its inception. These seemingly very different approaches represent different applications of this common core under different sets of assumptions about price formation and monetary system or unit of account. A secondary objective of this article is to clarify several aspects of the SSI. The SSI remains very poorly understood even by sophisticated readers. Contrasting the NI with the SSI helps to clarify the features of both.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.