Proudhon`s Theory of Constituted Value: From Labor Value to Value for the Worker and the Bank of the People

Abstract

The article displays P.-J. Proudhon’s theory of constituted value and the People’s Bank he promoted as an experimental test of this theory. Then it compares it to J. R. Commons’ theory of reasonable value. In this comparison, Proudhon appears as a forerunner of Commons and a thinker of credit money as well as of money as an institution, far ahead of his time. The comparison also leads to a new understanding of Proudhon’s view on value. For him, labor has no economic value, it is a social value that gives value to its products. There is no law of objective value, only systems of valuation marked by the interests of those who promote them: thus the constituted value of Proudhon is not a labor-value but a value for the worker. Also Proudhon appears as a landmark for the present in monetary innovations: in his economics appear the three main ideas on which present monetary alternatives to capitalist money are based, that is free credit, mutualism and time money.