A Model of the Monetary Expression of Labor Time with Non-commodity Money.

Following the commodity-money system that prevailed at the time of his research, Marx assumed the monetary expression of labor time (MELT) to be fixed. This assumption cannot hold in the contemporary regime of non-commodity money. It is essential to resolve the question of how the MELT is determined in a system of non-commodity money. The expression is the ratio of the total paper money circulating in the economy, less all paper money advanced on constant capital, to the total number of socially necessary labor hours exerted in the economy. Expressed algebraically, m = (Mv − C)/L. This model differs from those proposed by Moseley; Saros; Rieu, Lee, and Ahn; and Foley. JEL Classification : B51, E11 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]