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Marx's "Capital" and Its Place in Economic Thought
... 2 The 'abstract labour' interpretation proposed by Sweezy 1942, or by Dobb 1967, is widespread in the Anglo- phone word. Here, abstract labour is equivalent to 'labour in general', «what is common to all productive human activity» (Sweezy 1942, p. 30). ...
Teaching Marx in an economics programme is, today, a difficult task. From the perspective of an Italian university teacher, such difficulty mostly resides in the diffusion of a dogmatic attitude: the end of the Soviet Union, and hence of the Stalinist use of Marxism, necessarily entails the dismissal of Karl Marx’s works. This dogma shows a cultural crisis, which has also affected many economists. The paper stresses that a crucial concept in Marx’s analysis is reproduction. Teaching Marx starting from the reproduction schemes and introducing on these bases the theory of crisis leads – according to our experience – to three main outcomes: 1. It allows students to be aware that crises are not casual accidents; 2. It clarifies why in Marx we find powerful analytical tools to explain the forms assumed by capitalist crises; 3. It can raise doubts about the putative indisputability accorded to the scientific method of orthodox economics for the understanding of reality.
... (K/III: 398-99; emphasis added) 16. See, for example, Bortkiewicz 1949Bortkiewicz [1907Bortkiewicz ]: 201 and 1952Bortkiewicz [1906: 9, Desai 1989, Dobb 1967: 532-3, Dumenil 1980: 8, 22-23, 51, Lipietz 1982: 64, Sweezy 1949: xxiv and 1968[1942: 115, and de Vroey 1982: 47. ...
This article analyses the transformation of values into prices of production from the point of view of differences in the organic composition of capital. Marx's transformation has two stages. In the first, the value of the means of production used up is irrelevant; in the second, the economy is analysed at the level of price. The transformation helps to explain the distribution of labour and surplus value across the economy, and substantiates the claim that value is produced by labour alone. However, it does not allow the vector of prices of production to be calculated.
... The challenge to all living creatures is first and foremost a material challenge, the challenge of nature's scarcity. Consequently, Marx claimed that the mode of production is "the true source and theatre of all history" [cited in Dobb, (1967), p.529]. ...
This article explores why a deep understanding of Marx's project is essential for developing an adequate science of society. Marx focused on two aspects of social reality that are critical to its understanding, but are absent from the contemporary practice of social science. First, he viewed humanity's struggle to overcome nature's scarcity as causally and dynamically related to social organisation and social consciousness. Second, he unfolded a theory of our self-creation, the manner in which products of our manual and intellectual labour act back upon us to create us socially and intellectually. To the extent that we lose consciousness of this authorship, our freedom is constrained. We are controlled by our own creations. Our freedom requires a social science with Marx's breadth to enable us to recover awareness of our authorship of our social creations and thereby be empowered to control them, as opposed to being their victims.
... Meek and Dobb, in particular, welcomed the book by Sraffa as the long-awaited and rigorous, solution to the 'transformation problem'. In an introduction to an Italian edition of Capital in 1964 (published in the US as Dobb 1967) Dobb repeated that in Marx's theory of value it was possible to detect "two levels of approximation, or two stages in the analysis". In the first stage, that is in the first volume of Capital, commodities are thought to be exchanged proportionally to their contained labour: " [w]hat this theory of value essentially did was to explain conditions of exchange in terms of conditions of production". ...
... Some of the most influential readings of Marx hold that value is the labour embodied in commodities during prod~ction.~ Two such views are considered in this section, the traditional (Dobb, 1940(Dobb, , 1967Meek, 1956;Sweezy, 1968;and Mage, 1963) and the Sraffian (Hodgson, 1973(Hodgson, , 1981Pasinetti, 1977;and Steedman, 1977). ...
This paper presents an alternative reading of Marx's theory of value, which overcomes the dichotomy between production and circulation that characterizes several other approaches. This reading recognises that the subject of Capital is the capitalist economy, and it considers the relationship between labour and value from the viewpoint of the normalisation, synchronisation and homogenisation of labour. The formal possibility of existence of valueless money is discussed.
Sraffa’s early work on monetary Economics, his contributions to the theory of capital and his critique of neoclassical tenets are often seen as disjoint contributions. In contrast, we suggest that Sraffa’s contributions have to be viewed as a coherent whole and offer a classification of his scholarly contributions. We point to the unifying thread between his early and later work, which concerns the insufficiency of economic mechanisms or market forces to exclusively determine values (prices, profit rates and wage rates). Their simultaneous determination and consequently the overall indeterminacy of the system are important. We outline the motivations for incorporating money (in the form of credit and debt) inside the traditional Sraffian schemes, to expand the original system and harness its potential. We believe that there is both a need and scope for incorporating deferred means of payments, which are essential for the functioning of any evolved economic system.
La réception marxiste de la littérature managériale fut largement critique alors même qu'un grand nombre de constats sont partagés par les auteurs appartenant à ces deux corpus. Cette réception s'explique par certaines équivoques présentes dans les écrits de Marx. Il existe en effet dans son oeuvre, lorsqu'il s'efforce de prendre en compte l'émergence des grandes entreprises, une tension forte entre sa volonté réaliste et son cadre analytique. Le but de cet article est de présenter sa tentative d'intégration, au sein de son schéma d'analyse de la dynamique du capitalisme, des transformations caractéristiques de l'ère dite de « la Grande Industrie », en particulier l'émergence des sociétés par actions. Pour ce faire, nous discutons des distinctions conceptuelles opérées par Marx entre le capitaliste financier, le capitaliste industriel, le directeur et le manager. Celles-ci peuvent conduire à réinterroger sa théorie de la détermination des classes sociales, comme le firent les auteurs de la « révolution managériale » ou, plus récemment, Duménil et Lévy (2011, 2018).
Abstract: Even if they share numerous findings, Marxists were highly critical of the managerial literature. This critical reception can be explained by the ambiguities in Marx's works. In fact, there is, when he dealt with corporations, a tension between his realistic effort to address the issue and his analytical framework. The aim of the paper is to show how he tried to integrate in his framework the changes of the "Great Industry" era, especially the emergence of corporations. To that end, I discuss the conceptual distinctions made by Marx between the financial capitalist, the industrial capitalist, the director and the manager. I demonstrate that these categories led to reappraise his theory of social classes, as it has been done by the authors dealing with the "managerial revolution" or more recently Duménil and Lévy (2011, 2018).
The purpose of this introduction is to outline certain characteristics of Classical and Marxian political economy for readers who are relatively unfamiliar with this work. In doing so a major difficulty has to be faced. The interpretation of Classical and Marxian political economy, as well as of the individual economists who make up these schools, is highly controversial. No better illustration of this is provided than the various assessments which have been made of Ricardo’s work on value and distribution. At one extreme, Marshall (1890, appendix 1) argued that the labour theory of value, with its implication that profit represents exploitation, was for the most part an irrelevance and Ricardo’s main achievement was to abandon it. A polar opposite view is that of Marx (1862b), who maintained that Ricardo’s analysis represented a significant stage in the development of a logically watertight theory of surplus value. Others, like Stigler (1958), imply that Ricardo’s affinity to Marx stems from a pragmatic commitment to the labour theory, not a philosophic or even analytic orientation. On the other hand, Myrdal (1953) and Gordon (1959) reverse the basis of adherence.
Introduction 1. Materialist Dialects 1.1 Real Abstractions and Mental Generalisations 1.2 Marx, Hegal and 'New Dialects' 1.3 Conclusion 2. Interpretations of Marx's Value Theory 2.1 Embodied Labour Approaches 2.1.1 Traditional Marxism 2.1.2 Sraffian Analyses 2.2 Values from Theories 2.2.1 The Rubin Tradition 2.2.2 The 'New Interpretation' 2.3 Conclusion 3. Value and Capital 3.1 Division of Labour, Exploitation and Value 3.2 Capital 3.3 Conclusion 4. Wages and Exploitation 4.1 Wage Labour and Exploitation 4.2 Value of Labour Power 4.3 Conclusion 5. Values, Prices and Exploitation 5.1 Normalisation of Labour 5.1.1 Labour Intensity and Complexity, Education and Training 5.1.2 Mechanisation, Deskilling and Capitalist Control 5.2 Synchronisation of Labour 5.2.1 Value Transfers 5.2.2 Technical Change, Value and Crisis 5.3 Homogenisation of Labour 5.4 Conclusion 6. Composition of Capital 6.1 Understanding the Composition of Capital 6.2 Production and the Composition of Capital 6.3 Capital Accumulation 6.4 Conclusion 7. Transformation of Values into Prices of Production 7.1 Surplus Value, Profit, and the Composition of Capital 7.2 From Values to Prices of Production 7.3 The Transformation of Input Values 7.4 Conclusion 8. Money, Credit and Inflation 8.1 Labour and Money 8.2 Money and Prices of Production 8.3 Credit, Money and Inflation 8.4 Conclusion Conclusion References
A literatura geralmente analisa o problema Marxista da transformação de valores em preços de produção como sendo a determinação de preços em condições de concorrência intersetorial. Esse artigo demonstra que essa perspectiva é equivocada. Marx está interessado primordialmente em explicar a distribuição de capital, trabalho e mais-valia na economia e, para isso, uma forma mais complexa do valor é necessária, o preço de produção. Esse artigo mostra que, compreendida corretamente, não existe 'problema' na transformação de Marx nem inconsistência em sua análise, e que procedimentos tradicionais são insuficientes porque eles confundem os níveis de análise. A teoria de Marx é valiosa porque ela explica o significado e a importância dos preços. Nesse contexto, o cálculo do vetor de preços é elementar.
The essential aim is to reconstruct the original Marxian theory of value within the tradition of the classical "surplus" approach and to contrast this distinctive and unique Marxian critique of the classical tradition with the critiques of the modern Sraffian and neo-Ricardian value formulations. Engaging in some of the perennial controversies over the ostensible "transformation problem", it will be argued that Marx's original theory of value represents a radical break from the classical labour theory of value developed by Smith and Ricardo. In this sense, Ricardo's seminal "embodied labour" theory of value constitutes the critical historical antecedent in the recent revival of the Sraffa/Marx value controversies. The Sraffian rehabilitation of the Ricardian system, however, also inherits some of the original Ricardian fallacies and confusion over the categories of use- value/exchange-value, concrete/abstract labour, surplus value/profit, etc. In other words, it is impossible to reconcile the Marxian and Sraffian value formulations from an epistemological standpoint. Despite these irreconcilable theoretical problems, there are still some promising analytical lines of inquiry between the Marxian and Sraffian value/price systems.
In this paper two basic policy paradigms are distinguished: updated liberalism that is fully aware of the limits to markets and therefore aims at their active regulation, and neo-liberalism that is based on market fundamentalism and aims at privatisation, deregulation and budgetary austerity. The paper discusses how updated liberalism emerged after W.W.II, became hegemonic in the 1950s and 1960s and started to decline in the 1970s, while neo-liberalism gathered momentum in the 1970s and became hegemonic in the 1980s and 1990s. This historical examination suggests that neo-liberalism is inconsistent not only with the updated liberalism of Keynes and Pigou (and their followers) but also with the classical liberalism of Adam Smith and Stuart Mill, resembling rather the simplistic and over-optimistic laisser-faire of Say and Bastiat. Concluding remarks discuss the connections between the historical pattern observed in the evolution of markets and the parallel evolution of paradigms of liberalism observed in the history of economic thought.
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