The marginalist conception of value is indeed underwhelming, but it's also a compromise. Determining value through mathematical exercises using hypothetical n-c

The marginalist conception of value is indeed underwhelming, but it's also a compromise. Determining value through mathematical exercises using hypothetical n-commodity worlds with homogeneous factors and units is at best useful as an exposition for a theory of income distribution (as Sraffa tried to do) in that by assuming a labor or commodity theory of value you can attempt to argue for a rate of exploitation. Marxian economics has a whole lot of categories that are awkward, like "constant capital" being homogeneous and "variable capital" referencing wages of labor in producing commodities. There's barely any room for disequilibrium effects, complementarity, reserves and so forth. In turn, the organic composition of capital is held to be c/s+v, but empirical evidence on relation between OCC and crisis is scant and the concept of OCC is again completely foreign to uncertainty, disequilibrium and capital structure. It's just a ratio between two questionable taxonomies. Marxian economics has many similar failings as neoclassical economics, but because of its origins as a heterodox critique of Smith, Ricardo and Mill from a particular period, its evolution has been even more confusing. Marginalism is situated in a means-ends framework, which is the most one can really say about value without introspecting into personal intentions and valuations. It should be underlined that neoclassical production theory (MC=MR) is separate from the subjective theory of value proper, however. Menger, Jevons and Walras all had different takes on it. It's also worth noting that Marxian conceptions of use and exchange value have little to say about contemporary monetary and financial economies. Marxians still focus too much on issues like falling rate of profit, accumulation and OCC and often miss elephants in the room like financial fragility, or downplay them. It strikes me as archaic. Whether or not markets compute or define exchange value seems to me like a problem of overaggregation where the contemporary social institution of a "market economy" is conflated with a market in the abstract as a system of mutual exchange, as in Proudhon and others.