The Condition of Alienation and the Transformation of Value into Price in Karl Marx
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Using the philosophies of Louis Althusser and István Mészáros, this article seeks to interpret Marx’s theory of the transformation of value into price based on a philosophical view that emphasizes both the base/superstructure dialectic (Althusser) and alienation under capitalism (Mészáros). According to the logic of dialectical materialism, the economic base of the capitalist mode of production is determined by a historical dialectic (alienated labor) that produces an unsolvable contradiction with the capitalist imperatives of the superstructure. The alienation of the workers is perpetuated through their active subordination to the ideal and material power of the capitalist superstructure (including its ideal “law of value” which postulates the domination of exchange value over use value). They are led to believe that the profit-embedded prices of the commodities they produce have nothing to do with them. The illusion is that these prices are decided by an abstract “free market.” In reality, the laborers, due to their alienation, contribute directly to the formation of these prices by allowing the capitalists to freely compete with each other by lowering their respective “price of production.” There can be no profitable prices under capitalism without the contradictory condition of alienation perpetuated by the ideal power of the superstructure.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.042 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".