What units are labor values measured in?
The answer would seem to be obviously hours or person-years, which is indeed the unit David Ricardo used to measure labor values. But Marx measured value in monetary units, such as British pounds. In some of his most difficult passages, Marx argues that money is the “universal equivalent form” of “value in general.” For example, The first chief function of money is to supply commodities with the material for the expression of their values, or to represent their values as magnitudes of the same denomination, qualitatively equal, and quantitatively comparable. It thus serves as a universal measure of value…It is not money that renders commodities commensurable. Just the contrary. It is because all commodities, as values, are realised human labour, and therefore commensurable, that their values can be measured by one and the same special commodity, and the latter be converted into the common measure of their values, i.e., into money. Money as a measure of value, is the phenomenal form t
