27 NOVEMBER 1976, Page 18

Labour value

Sir: If, as the context suggests, Stuart Holland (16 October) is referring to Marx's Labour Theory of Value, the passage in which he states that profits result from labour receiving 'less than full value' is imprecise. Of course labour does not receive the full labour value of output; and certainly Marx took pains to stress that this would still be the case even under Communism. The point is rather that profits would nonetheless emerge, and under conditions o perfect competition at that, even when labour received the full value of labour power. as a consequence of the extraction of surplus value.

Peter D. Balacs Queen Elizabeth House, 21 St Giles, Oxford