A theory of capital as value in progress

This is a paper on the theory of capital. It deals with the role of capital in a cost-of-production theory of value in which both labour and capital are directly productive. The guidelines of an analytical method are proposed. Marx’s ‘monetary expression of abstract labour-value’ (MEV) is used as price-index. It is preferred to the ‘monetary expression of labour time’ (MELT), exclusively focused on living labour, suggested by some neo-Marxist scholars during the ’New Value Controversy’. The author, a critical Marxist, develops the trace provided by Marx in his Grundrisse ’Fragment on Machines’, where he pointed out the need to abandon the labour theory of value and to rely on a broader labour-and-capital monetary theoretical construction. Due attention is paid in this essay to the time and money dimensions of capital and to the roles of both real and financial capital.