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This involves an undifferentiated concept of capital as well as of labour (viz. abstract labour). It is the struggle of capital-ingeneral with labour-in-general which is at the root of capitalism's reproduction and the limits to it. The struggle of manycapitals in competition with each other through exchange does not have the same significance. Taking the struggle of capital-in-general as basic, it is logically impossible to analyse it in terms of prices which differ from values, for such prices only exist on the basis of competitive exchange between many capitals (equalisation of the rate of profit).

This omission on Marx's part has bred considerable controversy. It has led the neo-Ricardian school to reject value analysis altogether (see, for example, articles by Hodgson and Steedman). As we shaIl see this is not simply a conclusion of their theory but also their very starting-point. For neoRicardianism bases its analysis on the technical relations of production. These comprise the physical and labour inputs necessary to produce any given set of commodities. For example, to produce a given commodity, quantities Xl, X2, ••• XII of certain raw materials (physical me ans of production) may be necessary as weIl as a quantity t of labour-time (not labour-power).

1 Neo-Ricardian Theories We have seen in the last chapter that the positions of neoRicardians and Fundamentalists on value theory are strongly opposed and that each in its own way falls to take full account of the hierarchical, articulated structure of economic spheres with production determinant. The same characteristics are found in the debate on the nature of productive and unproductive labour, but for the following reason this debate has been conducted with an even greater intensity and has been more at the centre of political debate.