We all know that various economists disagree on what constitutes value in society and in commodities. There are various theories of value that have been proposed throughout history such as labour, agriculture (Physiocrats), marginalist, etc. If we assume that value in society adheres to one of these theories of value, surely that implies that it must be consistently upheld and applied across capitalist society. As far as I am aware, all economic theories that are based on a theory of value assume that that value remains constant throughout the doctrine and can always be applied as the sole theory of value.
My question is: do people subconsciously adhere to one of these theories of value, even if they do not consciously recognise it? For example, if we assume a Smithian adheres to a labour theory of value whereas a Marginalist adheres to a marginal theory of value, both economists must assume that all humans everywhere who participate in the global capitalist economy must subscribe to their particular theory of value, at least on a practical level.
Therefore the Smithian would assume the Marginalist subconsciously adheres to a labour theory of value (at least in their economic actions), even if they consciously see themselves as adhering to a marginal theory of value. Likewise, the Marginalist assumes the Smithian is in fact a Marginalist in practice but is not consciously aware of it and thus consciously considers themselves to be a Smithian.
The only alternative to this would be for the Smithian to truly act as a Smithian in their approximation of value and the Marginalist to truly act as a Marginalist in theirs. But this would put both of their economic doctrines in a bind as it would imply that multiple theories of value and economic actions based on them can occur simultaneously in a global world economy based on commodity exchange. Smith's theory would simply be reduced to stating that value was determined by labour, providing you as an individual chose to believe that. What sort of economic doctrine would this be?! Anyone could make up any old economic doctrine based on this premise!
Hope this makes sense.
I'm afraid that doesn't make much sense to me at all. There certainly are different theories about how capitalist society operates. We have to make our own judgement based on our experience and understanding of the practical operation of the world around us as to which theories or combination of theories best explains that reality. The real world does not run according to what theory individuals ''subscribe'' to, although capitalist governments and their economic advisers can make fools of themselves by seeking to run it according to theories which don't deliver in practice what they aim for.