Value and Commodities in DEP

Q&A
1

Do you now any articles or books which talk about value(-form) and commodity production in realtion to models of DEP?

So far I have:

  • The Test of Communism (Bernes, 2021): he does not talk about DEP specifically but his test of value (and communism) could also be applied to DEP models.
  • Conceptualizing the future: Marx’s value theory and the debate on markets and planning (Schulman, 2019): discusses cockshott/Cottrell, Devine and Laibman.
2

Charles Bettelheim and the Value-Form: The Problem of the Real Socialisation of the Productive Forces in Socialist Transition (March, 2025)

The disregard for Bettelheim’s work in today’s debate may illustrate just how far removed our present moment is from his, when transitional social formations were still accessible for direct study. However, Bettelheim’s contributions remain highly relevant – not only because he offers a framework for considering postcapitalism through the lens of value-form analysis (which provides an important bridge between current discussions on socialist/democratic planning and contemporary value-form theory debates) but also because he makes an important contribution to the question of strategy, which is perhaps more salient for us today than the question of transition. His critical analysis of the limitations of postwar socialist plans offers valuable guidelines for navigating organisational and strategic issues in our present context. These insights could serve to temper the appeal of certain paradigms which have become hegemonic in socialist strategic thinking, namely nationalisation, workers’ control, and technological utopianism.

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