Behind the Crisis: Marx's Dialectics of Value and Knowledge
... Means of production that do not deteriorate, such as the software prototype, cannot impart any value to the copies, rendering the copies themselves, as it were, value-less. Jeon (2011) also rejects the 'average costs thesis', which holds that, if both the prototype and its copies have been produced by the same company or in the same production process, the value of all units is determined by the 'average production costs', each unit representing an aliquot share of the total costs (Starosta et al., 2024;Parkhurst, 2019;Carchedi 2011). The author claims that 'knowledge production' and 'commodity production' are entirely different production processes, so that the costs of the former cannot be imputed to the latter (Jeon 2011: 198). ...
... It is sufficient to note on this score that he engages in a back-andforth movement between species-being and historically-specific determinations of labour, particularly with regard to the unity (or absence thereof) of conception and execution (Jeon 2011: 198)-a procedure eventually leading nowhere. At a certain point, Jeon decides to shift gears and proceeds to assimilate knowledge production to the non-labour (in Carchedi's [2011] illuminating terms) of control and supervision (Jeon 2011: 207), i.e., to the specifically capitalist, antagonist, expression of social production, of labour conducted collectively (Marx 1996). Considering that the author is primarily concerned with the production of software in his discussion of KICs, this argumentative move raises the question of where the connection lies between copying software and the management practices of control and supervision. ...
The Marxian notions of ‘wear and tear’ and ‘moral depreciation’ have been employed in the scholarly debate on the value-determinations of knowledge-intensive commodities (KICs) to account for their alleged ‘peculiar cost structure’. The latter refers to the substantial disparity between the high costs incurred in the production of the first unit or ‘prototype’ of KICs, on the one hand, and the relatively negligible costs associated with the generation of their subsequent copies, on the other. This paper examines the relevant literature to elucidate whether ‘moral depreciation’ and ‘wear and tear’ have been utilised in a manner consistent with Marx’s own analysis. His original account is reconstructed through an exegetical reading of key passages found across the three volumes of Capital. It is demonstrated that Marx’s original ideas have been misinterpreted and distorted, resulting in an inaccurate and unrealistic characterisation of the value-determinations of KICs. The paper also challenges the idea that the ‘peculiar cost structure’ is a distinctive feature of KICs, thereby suggesting that the entire debate may be misplaced. This contribution adds to the growing body of Marxist scholarship that affirms the actuality and validity of the core categories of Marx and Engels’s Critique of Political Economy.
... Muitos esforços já foram realizados no sentido de demonstrar o equívoco desse tipo de procedimento, e de perscrutar a relação entre lei da queda tendencial da taxa de lucro e o advento da última crise econômica mundial. Autores como Callinicos (2009), Shaik (2010, Carchedi (2011), Roberts (2009) e o já citado Kliman (2012), dentre vários outros, desenvolveram estudos empírica e conceitualmente embasados sobre o papel da trajetória da taxa de lucro no interior da dinâmica global de acumulação de capital, enfatizando a relevância da queda da taxa média de lucro para a compreensão da chamada crise de "estagflação" da década de 1970 e da mais recente crise econômica mundial. Por falta de espaço, optamos por deixar de lado aqui as diferenças que existem entre as abordagens e os resultados a que chegam cada um desses autores. ...
A mais recente crise econômica mundial foi uma das mais profundas, abrangentes e violentas da história do capitalismo. Não obstante, existem múltiplas e divergentes explicações sobre suas origens, seus desdobramentos, e as perspectivas por ela abertas. Ao sustentar, sem nenhuma pretensão de originalidade, que se trata de uma crise de sobreacumulação de capital, com múltiplas determinações e inscrita na hodierna dinâmica da acumulação de capital, e, por conseguinte, não meramente de uma crise decorrente do desregramento das finanças ou da falta de demanda efetiva, apontaremos os limites e o risco das respostas reformistas que proliferaram, sobretudo as concernentes ao fortalecimento do intervencionismo estatal. Para tanto, será criticada a perspectiva “subconsumista” veiculada pela escola da Monthly Review.
... Accordingly, such strand of scholarship can hardly provide anything relevant to our present discussion. A more promising train of thought has been advanced by Carchedi (2011), a Marxist economist who points out that the academic community may be considered as internally stratified along capitalist lines: scientists (or technicians with a background in science) in the lower echelons perform routine work and have little control over the scientific enterprise as a whole; those in the higher echelons acts as representatives of capital within academia. At the level of abstraction considered by the author, this is totally correct. ...
There is a paucity of studies addressing the nature of the social relations of production prevailing in academia prior to the commodification of academic research. By filling that gap, this paper enables us to better understand the historical presuppositions from which the process of knowledge commodification in academia has evolved. Our theoretically informed analysis will focus on peer review, given that it is one of the few academic practices where traces of that historical past can still be found. On the basis of Marx's exposition of the main features of pre-capitalist social relations of production in the Grundrisse, it will be concluded that peer review reveals that social relations of production in academia were of a pre-capitalist, or natural-like, nature: peer review is labour of a direct nature; is the practice through which the academic community mediates its own reproduction, determining how-and, sometimes, if-its members enter into contact with the objective conditions of production; finally, in this latter capacity, peer review presupposes that the academic community relates to the conditions of knowledge production as though they were their collective property. These findings are employed to account for the underlying logics of the ongoing 'functional transformation' of peer review.
... Marx's law of value undermines attempts to epitomize technology (productivity improvements) as capitalist development's driving force. Rather, it is the rate of profit, that immediately knowable and empirical datum, to which accumulation and investment are tethered, a proxy for the less 'empirical' concept of surplus value (Carchedi, 2011;Kliman, 2011;Mattick, 2011Mattick, , 2008. Any attempt to situate agrarian capitalism as a precondition for so-called industrial development idealistically posits some dehistoricized 'ruse of reason' behind the backs of social actors that in very concrete circumstances made decisions according to a contingent logic quite distant from Brenner's suggestions. ...
Histories of agrarian capitalism have often been constrained by the implications of Robert Brenner's work on the subject. This essay, employing archival and secondary research on Ecuador's long 19th century experiences with cacao capitalism, argues that production processes and localized forms of accumulation, rather than class structure and legal relations, should be included in our definition of the concept. By focusing on how fixed capital in cacao trees and the production of the yearly cacao commodity responded to global demand and local material conditions, I propose amplifying the concept of agrarian capitalism, as well as a rethinking of coastal Ecuador's history of capitalist development. I highlight how both absolute and relative forms of surplus value generation coexisted in coastal Ecuador's cacao haciendas, while demonstrating how financial instruments used for extending the cacao frontier undermined the prospects for long‐term growth.
... Г. Карчеди в динамике нормы прибыли производственного сектора экономики США в период 1948-2009 годов выделяет два цикла: 1948-1986 и 1986-2009 годы. В первом цикле норма прибыли достигает пикового значения в 1950 году (22%), падает до 3% в 1986 году, во втором -поднимается до 14% в 2006 году и падает до 5% в 2009 году (Carchedi, 2011). Такая циклическая динамика нормы прибыли соответствует логике (рост нормы прибыли на повышательной волне и снижение нормы прибыли на понижательной волне) и хронологии развёртывания кондратьевских циклов второй половины ХХ -начала XXI века (повышательная волна 4-го цикла -с середины 1940-х до конца 1960-х годов, понижательная волна 4-го цикла -с конца 1960-х до начала 1980-х годов; повышательная волна 5-го цикла -с начала 1980-х до начала 2000-х годов, понижательная волна 5-го циклас начала 2000-х до конца 2010-х годов). ...
... The emergence of the two great late modern crises-the economic crisis of 2008 and the environmental crisis-has prompted calls for a return to Marx and the Marxian critique of capitalism (see, for example, Carchedi 2011;Eagleton 2012;Henderson 2013;Jameson 2014;Wolff 2010). Yet, not wholly unjustifiably, contemporary social theory and philosophy remain ambivalent on the precise character and value of Marx's contributions (see, for example, Hudelson 2006, in this journal). ...
The emergence of the two great late modern crises—economic and environmental—has prompted calls for a return to Marx. This article describes a Marxian account of the 2008 economic crisis relating it to the phenomena of job polarization, de-industrialization, the decline of the middle class, and political populism in Europe and elsewhere. These are argued to spring from political mobilization due to certain kinds of capability deprivations as understood in Amartya Sen’s capability approach. The article demonstrates the continued relevance of Marx for philosophy of the social sciences as well as for a better understanding of the future challenge of maintaining societal stability in the West.
This article addresses the topic of Marxist Thought and Law, aiming to explore the main contributions of this approach to legal studies. Through critical analysis, it seeks to understand how Marxist thought enables a deeper comprehension of legal norms and their impact on the reproduction of power relations in society. Undoubtedly, this perspective offers an alternative and challenging view of the law traditionally taught in law schools. Various theoretical and empirical sources are examined to illustrate the richness of the dialogue between Marxism and law. This study aims to contribute to a greater understanding of the intersections between these two disciplines and their relevance for analyzing contemporary legal challenges.
Resumen: Este artículo aborda el tema del Pensamiento Marxista y el Derecho, con el objetivo de explorar las principales aportaciones de este enfoque al estudio jurídico. A través del análisis crítico, se busca entender cómo el pensamiento marxista permite una comprensión más profunda de las normas legales y su impacto en la reproducción de las relaciones de poder en la sociedad. Sin duda, esta perspectiva ofrece una visión alternativa y desafiante del derecho tradicionalmente enseñado en las escuelas de derecho. Se examinan diversas fuentes teóricas y empíricas que permiten ilustrar la fecundidad del diálogo entre el marxismo y el derecho. Se espera que este estudio contribuya a un mayor entendimiento sobre las intersecciones entre estas dos disciplinas y su relevancia para analizar los desafíos jurídicos contemporáneos.
KEYWORDS In this paper, we consider the fundamental failure of the authors of "the temporal single-system interpretation" (TSSI). It boils down to the impossibility of reproducing within the framework of this concept all the results of the transformation of value described by Marx in Volume III of Capital. The errors of TSSI are due to the internal properties of the two-department model of simple reproduction, which the authors overlooked and used this model for the iterative continuation of the transformational algorithm visible in Marx. We found out the origins of this failure by comparing the results of TSSI with the results of simultaneous solutions, using several methods and Marx's postulates of invariance applied by him in the original and secondary transformation of values into prices of production. Marx; theory of value; TSSI; symmetric cost matrix; critical analysis; new methods. JEL CODES B3; B24
This article delves into the relationship between Marx’s analysis of the law of the falling rate of profit (LFRP) in Chapter III of his 1864–65 Manuscript and Part III of ‘Capital’, Volume 3, which emerged after Engels’s editing. After presenting Marx’s analysis of the LFRP in his various economic manuscripts, the article examines Engels’ principal interventions in Marx’s text categorizing them into three clusters: interventions regarding the titles and the structure of the text, text insertions, text omissions and other modifications. Furthermore, it underscores some methodological and theoretical perspectives regarding criticisms of Engels’ editing and explores certain aspects of the Marx-Engels relationship pertaining to the completion of ‘Capital’, Volume 3. The archival investigation deploys the material contained in the MEGA edition, whose second section (completed in 2012) includes all manuscripts related to ‘Capital’. This investigation concludes that, despite the necessary interventions, Engels editing remains faithful to Marx’s analysis and, consequently, Part III of ‘Capital’, Volume 3 reflects Marx’s analysis of the LFRP.
Kâr Oranının Düşme Eğilimi Yasası (KODEY), Marksist iktisat literatüründe sıkça tartışılan konulardan biridir. KODEY, kâr oranının zamanın her anında düşmekte olduğunu belirtmemekte fakat uzun dönemde ortalama kâr oranının düşme eğiliminde olacağını ifade etmektedir. Yasa, Marx’ın Kapital’inin yayımlandığı tarihten günümüze kadar birçok tartışmaya neden olmuştur. Söz konusu tartışmalar konuya ilişkin zengin bir literatür oluşmasını sağlamıştır. Özellikle kriz dönemleri, ilgili tartışmaları yeniden canlandırmaktadır. Bu çalışmada Kâr Oranının Düşme Eğilimi Yasası’na ilişkin günümüze kadar gelen tartışmalar gözden geçirilmektedir. Yasaya ilişin tartışmalar iki temel izlek üzerinden takip edilmiştir. Bunlardan ilki (Okishio Teoremi) fiziksel çıktı miktarına odaklanmakta ve yasanın tutarsızlığını iddia etmektedir. İkincisi ise yasanın gerçekte işleyip işlemediğinin belirtilemeyecek kadar muğlak ve belirsiz olduğu iddiasına dayanmaktadır. Söz konusu tartışmalar yine aynı izlek korunarak yöntemsel olarak da ayırt edilebilmektedir. Yasaya getirilen eleştiriler ve bu eleştirilere verilen cevaplar gözden geçirildiğinde, yasanın Marksist iktisatçılar arasında kapitalist sistemin içsel çelişkilerini gösteren önemli ölçüde bütünlüklü bir kriz teorisi olarak kabul edildiği söylenebilmektedir.
This study shows the differences between structural changes in various economies by treating I-O (Input-Output) tables as weighted directed networks and applying the best suited centrality measure to those networks. This is important especially in the context of the ongoing global economic crisis, which continues to be a challenge for economists. The theoretical premise is that the Marxian distinction between production and non-production activities is essential to understanding the dynamics of capitalism. Therefore, to explore the structural changes one must include a sectoral reclassification based on such a distinction. The essay argues that network analysis of reconstructed I-O tables in a Marxian framework reveals different and important patterns across countries, for example, United States, Germany and Spain.
The fulcrum of this work is knowledge: what it is and how it is generated within the context of a capitalist society. First, Marx’s analysis of the objective labour process is extended to the mental labour process. Then, objective and mental labour processes are defined in terms of objective and mental transformations, with consideration paid to which of the two types of transformation is determinant. This requires a discussion of dialectical logic and formal logic. Within dialectical logic, two types of processes are introduced: open ended and pre-determined. It is argued that computers (both traditional and quantum) and Artificial Intelligence cannot generate new knowledge, because they (a) rely on formal logic, i.e. they cannot engage in open-ended dialectical processes, and (b) are impervious to social determination. Connectedly, Artificial Intelligence systems such as ChatGPT cannot be a substitute for human thought or writing, because of the inevitability of ‘model collapse’. Next, focus is shifted to a specific form of knowledge: the ‘Copenhagen interpretation’ of quantum mechanics. It is shown that this interpretation is steeped in irrationalism and that it is a variant of pro-capitalist ideology. Finally, the social-historical roots of this ideology are revealed.
In this paper, I investigate archivally Michael Heinrich's arguments for the existence of a crucial theoretical shift in Marx's thought during the 1870s centered around his supposed doubts about the validity of the law of the falling rate of profit. Heinrich's arguments have been grouped into six clusters and discussed deploying the material contained in collections of published and unpublished writing of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, such as MECW and especially MEGA, whose second section includes all manuscripts related to Capital. This investigation concludes that the manuscripts and letters that Heinrich invokes to support his arguments do not substantiate any uncertainty on Marx's part about the validity of the law of the falling rate of profit nor a shift of his opinion during the 1870s towards the primacy of capitalist circulation, and especially credit, for explaining economic crisis.
Lean production is widely regarded on the left as a system devised to intensify labour and increase surplus value. Matt Vidal has argued that this view of the system needs to be revised. In his view, workers and Marxist concerned with the labour process should welcome the increased skills and knowledge that are associated with the adoption of Lean. This critique maintains that his conclusion is the combined result of mis-reading Marx, ignoring alternative accounts and selective use of his own findings.
We refute the objection raised against Marx's theory of value by Philip Mirowski (that it is an internally inconsistent amalgam of the substance and social model of value) by identifying value insofar as it subsists between production and exchange with the property in statistical mechanics known as thermodynamic depth. In production, concrete labor time is converted into the thermodynamic depth embodied in commodities. In exchange, the thermodynamic depth of commodities is converted back into time again, albeit, at this point in the circuit, the time into which it is converted is socially necessary labor time, i.e., abstract labor. Consistently with the social model of value, value increases can (as Mirowski points out) arise where changes in the conversion factor between time and thermodynamic depth take place between production and exchange, but (consistently with the substance model) the thermodynamic depth of commodities can only be increased in production.
Retrospection and transformation of the phenomena of criticism and crisis in
social theory in recent decades have led to the weakening and even
“illegitimate” renunciation of the said doublet. The paper presents an
analysis of the renewal of discourse on criticism/crisis and its effects
with special consideration of the possibilities of structural criticism. We
included several authors of recent analyses as well as the viewpoints that
have led to reconsideration of historical and analytical dynamics of two
categories, structure and conjuncture, as a form of analysis of current
structural processes in terms of structural analysis and criticism. The
paper comprises three parts. The first part is a reflection on the reason
criticism and crisis have been subjected to different processes of
derogation despite their original connection. In the second part, we show
the effects of different ways that crisis has manifested itself in
capitalism and explain its dispersive and “non-punctual” modalities. The
third part raises the question of chances of reuniting the crisis and
“immanent criticism” based on structural criticism, and we further
articulate its connections with immanent criticism. Structural criticism is
viewed as a connection between immanent criticism and transcendent
orientation that is focused on the reconnection between crisis and
criticism, the elements related to capitalism.
Since the collapse of the bubble economy at the beginning of the 1990s, Japan has been in secular stagnation. Despite the stagnant economic conditions, the rate of profit has been rising, not falling. The coexistence of the rise in profitability and prolonged economic stagnation is a manifestation of the fundamental contradiction of present-day Japanese capitalism. Marx’s law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall ( LTRPF ) provides a consistent explanation regarding the paradoxical situation in Japan characterised not by a falling but a rising rate of profit. Meanwhile, this paper discusses the Monopoly Capitalism school, which has studied capitalist behaviour concerning productive investment and changes in the form of capitalist competition at the monopoly stage of capitalism. While the school’s negation of the LTRPF is unacceptable, their notions may provide useful explanations as to why the rate of profit has risen under secular stagnation in Japan.
This work focuses exclusively on the modern economic aspects of imperialism. We define it as a persistent and long-term net appropriation of surplus value by the high-technology imperialist countries from the low-technology dominated countries. This process is placed within the secular tendential fall in profitability, not only in the imperialist countries but also in the dominated ones. We identify four channels through which surplus value flows to the imperialist countries: currency seigniorage; income flows from capital investments; unequal exchange through trade; and changes in exchange rates.
We pay particular attention to the theorisation and quantification of international UE and of exchange-rate movements. Concerning UE , we extend Marx’s transformation procedure to the international setting. We use two variables in the analysis of UE : the organic composition of capital and the rate of exploitation, and we measure which of these two variables is more important in contributing to UE transfers. We research a time span longer than in any previous study. We also introduce the distinction between narrow and broad unequal exchange according to whether two countries are assumed to trade only with each other or also with the rest of the world.
As for the analysis of the exchange rates as a channel for appropriation of international surplus value, we reject conventional approaches because they are rooted in equilibrium theory. We find very strong empirical evidence that exchange rates tend towards the point at which the productivities are equalised. This is only a tendency because this equalisation is inherently incompatible with the nature of imperialism.
Finally, given its topicality, we apply our analysis to the relation between the US and China and find that China is not an imperialist country according to our definition and data.
Financialisation theories have occupied an important place in the debate about contemporary capitalism and its transformations, involving a set of ideas from renowned researchers around the world. Although not an easy task, revisiting them is necessary, especially from the perspective of the critique of political economy. As the spaces of accumulation tend to change within the current dynamics of world capitalism, with fictitious capital as the centre of analysis, works by contemporary authors have sought to capture some of these changes that affect both the macroeconomics, especially regarding the microeconomic politics of austerity and its recessive effects, and the microeconomics, from the perspective of firms, especially those listed on the stock exchange, a totality that moves with its own characteristics. This debate must be umbilically linked to the fundamental categories of the critique of political economy, such as commodity and its various forms, money, and its development, as well as capital and its autonomous functional forms. It is from these categories and their movements that we will aim to reflect on the finacialisation, using as an example some indicators of the Brazilian economy.
Proponents of a monetary interpretation of Marx’s theory of value ( monetäre Werttheorie ) argue that one cannot estimate the amounts of socially necessary labour time that lie behind the prices, an interpretation usually ascribed to the West German Neue Marx‑Lektüre . As Hans-Georg Backhaus began fleshing out his monetary interpretation in the early 1970s, he referred explicitly to debate among economists in early‑1960s East Germany about the possibility of estimating quantities of labour value in terms of commodities’ labour content. In fact, scholars who articulated a powerful position in the latter discussion closely approximated the Neue Marx-Lektüre ’s ‘monetary interpretation’. They held that expressing labour value in terms of labour time is impossible: the substance of value is not a measurable quantity of labour time but, rather, a social relation. Hence, it is problematic that Neue Marx-Lektüre adherents today should maintain an inaccurate contrast between their reading of Capital and that of ‘traditional Marxism’.
Since the end of the expansionary period after the Second War, the world economy went through a long period of mediocre growth with a major recession in 2009 and another in 2020. This period is examined following As Time Goes By, the last contribution by Chris Freeman, with the cooperation of this co-author. As a long period of readjustment after the beginning of a structural crisis is imposed by the mismatch between the capabilities of the emerging techno-economic paradigm and the socio-institutional framework, my argument is that the duration of this transition is explained by the difficult process of replacing a successful institutional setting, that which supported the post-War expansion, by the new accumulation regime that is being constituted. Instead of most of the literature on long waves, which tries to uncover some mechanics of succession of radical technological innovations, this paper addresses different questions: how does the socio-institutional adaptation proceed, and how relevant is this process to explain the length of the downswing since the turning point of the 1970s. In order to investigate such process of readjustment, the conditions for the new rule of financial accumulation are discussed, including the forms and duration of the process of selection, reproduction, and education of the elite, and changes in institutions, norms, and social networks.
The objective of this paper is to analyze how brand image management participates in the multiple dimensions of corporate strategy, from conception to product manufacturing, through advertising. Therefore, the case of MAN Latin America, a Volkswagen Group company that markets trucks and buses of both MAN and Volkswagen brands, is presented. Its plant, located in the municipality of Resende, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, was built from the modular consortium model. This article seeks to demonstrate how there is a division of labor for which the parts supplier companies are directly responsible for the manufacturing of the vehicles, while MAN Latin America focuses on information control, marketing, design, research and development (R&D) and, at the intersection of these activities, brand management. Such a division seems to be part of the reconfiguration trend of global production networks (GPN) whereby the concentration of brands, intellectual property and other intangible assets are increasingly important for capitalist accumulation.
This chapter looks at the problem of the method in Marx. In particular, it examines those texts in which Marx states the ‘scientifically correct method’, in his famous section ‘The method of Political Economy’ in the Grundrisse. It is from these texts that the author performs a critique of what he considers the usual interpretation of Marx’s method and then claims that what is described in those texts are the procedures of general science rather than his method. The author concludes that the solution to this issue is not exclusively methodological or epistemological, but ontological, and that, apart from Lukács, the most influential interpretations could not understand the ontological stance of the Marxian text, which is exactly the most fundamental dimension of his critique.
This article is an attempt to trace out the historical development of capitalism and the ongoing struggle between capitalist globalization and an emerging socialist/communist globalization as a dialectical counter-tendency. Based on a dialectical materialist methodology, our approach starts with an historical overview of capitalist accumulation and globalization, explaining also the crisis-prone character of capitalism. Within a framework of capitalist world-ecology, we subsequently examine the increasing significance of ecological conditions and the role played by ecological exhaustion in the exacerbated socio-ecological crisis. At the backdrop of recurrent and deepening crisis, we briefly explore the history of class struggle and revolutionary efforts to supersede capitalism. As argued, the revolutionary failures during the twentieth century do not indicate fatal shortcomings of Marx’s theory or disprove the feasibility of communism, but only reflect the problematic conditions and flawed strategies associated with the relevant endeavors. Finally, the strategy to transcend capitalism is placed within a global context, counter-posing the currently dominant capitalist globalization. As suggested, this global strategy and the common transnational struggle towards communism require novel forms of organization from below, an alliance of working classes with broader social movements, and a direct confrontation of capitalist state power.
This article seeks to make a critical contribution to the “sovereignty problem” in food sovereignty (FS) studies. Contemporary scholarship has largely struggled to answer the question of who or what is sovereign within the realm of FS politics—underpinned by the relocalisation of agrarian production, sustainable nature–society relations, and a radical democratisation of food systems. Although the most recent scholarship has made significant progress on this issue, I offer an alternative historical materialist account of sovereignty understood as the combination of rights and territory. From a critical Marxian perspective, I deconstruct the basis of sovereign power as the intersection between social property rights (exploitation) and territorial governance (political technology) congealed within both capital and the state. This approach thus provides some clarity as to the necessary breaks required to establish an FS regime (self‐directed labour and cooperative territorial governance). The framework is then applied to the case of Bolivarian Venezuela. While witnessing some important achievements, Venezuela's FS experiment has encountered a number of contradictions. As this case study shows, peasant struggles aiming to retake control over production and establish cooperative forms of governance must traverse the entire terrain of the state and thus affect a broader socialisation of society's sociopolitical infrastructures.
Reading different or controversial intentions into Marx and Engels' works has been somewhat a common but rather unquestioned practice in the history of Marxist scholarship. Engels' Dialectics of Nature, a torso for some and a great book for others, is a case in point. A bold line seems to shape the entire Engels debate and separate two opposite views in this regard: Engels the contaminator of Marx's materialism vs. Engels the self-started genius of dialectical materialism. What Engels, unlike Marx, has not enjoyed so far is a critical reflection upon the relationship between different layers of this text: authorial, textual, editorial and interpretational. Informed by a historical hermeneutic, inquiry into the elements that structure the debate on "Dialectics of Nature," and into the different political and philosophical functions attached to it, makes it possible to relocate the meaning of "dialectics" in a more precise context. Engels' dialectics is less complete than we usually think it is, but he achieved more than most scholars would like to admit.
While the majority of the scientific community holds Marxian Value and Price Theory to be internally inconsistent because of the so-called “transformation problem”, these claims can be sufficiently refuted. The key to the solution of the “transformation problem” is quite simple, so this contribution, because it requires the rejection of simultanism and physicalism, which represent the genuine method of neoclassical economics, a method that is completely incompatible with Marxian Critique of Political Economy. Outside of the iron cage of neoclassical equilibrium economics, Marxian ‘Capital’ can be reconstructed without neoclassical “pathologies” and offers us a whole new world of analytical tools for a critical theory of capitalist societies and its dynamics.
This chapter analyzes capitalist economic development in Peru over the years 1980-2016. We use a critical political economy and dependency theory perspective to argue that capitalist development in Peru is a specific capitalist development and is principally determined by the global North in general and transnational Capital in particular. Peru’s role in the international division of labor is not only translated in an economic model based on the export of the country’s mineral resources, but also in the country’s economic and business structure. The Peruvian economy is an organically unified economy, although it manifests itself as an economy divided into an advanced economy and capitalist subsistence economy. Both economies are intimately tied and need each other for production and reproduction.
The chapter is organized in seven parts:
1. The dynamics of capitalist development and its principal contradictions
2. A dependency theory perspective on peripheral capitalist development
3. A chronological account of the main economic developments and economic policy decisions: 1980-2016
4. Peru’s role in the international division of labor and its economic development model
5. The structure of the Peruvian economy
6. Dynamics of capital accumulation (the profit rate)
7. The capitalist subsistence economy
This article supports a holistic interpretation of Marxian thought to argue the existence of socio-historical, objectives and tendential laws of motion governing the reproduction of the system. In particular, it highlights the place of the law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in the analysis of the reproduction of capitalism, and therefore the theory of crisis, as crises arise from the inner logic of capital. While holistic and emphasizing the objective aspects, this approach is not deterministic, nor does it fall into the indeterminacy of the overdetermination approach.
In the final chapter, the emphasis is put on the relation between the critical discourse and the genealogical reading of history under a materialist and historical perspective, in order to raise questions regarding the current syntax of power relations and knowledge in the historical conjuncture of neoliberal homo œconomicus.
The problem of Marx’s ‘law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall’ remains highly controversial today. Marx ceased emphasising the importance of the ‘law’ after 1868, as if he also started doubting its validity. Defending the validity of the law, Saito attempts to explain why Marx seemed to alter his emphasis. According to Saito, this change occurred as Marx more clearly recognised the enormous ‘elasticity of capital’ based on the elasticity of the material world. Marx began intensive research in natural sciences to comprehend how the elasticity of nature could be appropriated by capital to counteract the falling rate of profit. The elasticity of nature is, however, not infinite. When it reaches a limit, it suddenly loses its benefits. Capital continues to overcome any limits of nature, but it ultimately causes ecological crises and undermines the material conditions for free and sustainable human development.
This paper presents a critique of mainstream growth ideology, as well as of a variety of neo-Malthusian or liberal approaches considering economic growth as an ideology, and “growth economies” as the main culprit of ecological crisis, while disconnecting growth from the prevailing capitalist mode of production. To tackle ecological crisis, they suggest economic de-growth or a steady-state economy, while often projecting the negative impact of economic growth to different forms of production. On the contrary, this paper considers economic growth as an inherent necessity of the capitalist mode of production and explores the socio-ecological conditions of economic growth and capitalist accumulation. With a brief reference to Greece, it is demonstrated that even a protracted recession cannot reverse the trend of environmental degradation and socio-ecological crisis. As argued, overcoming the current crisis requires overcoming not only economic growth, but capitalism itself.
This article aims to contribute to the literature on Marx's systematic-dialectical method through a critical reading and discussion of the significance and presentational 'architecture' of the section on commodity fetishism in the dialectical sequence of form-determinations in Capital. In order to undertake this task, the paper firstly explores the content and expositional structure of the first three sections of Chapter 1 of Capital. This sets the stage for a methodologically-minded close examination of Marx's presentation of the fetish character of the commodity, which shows that there is a precise systematic sequence which gives unity to the flow of his argument within the section on 'The Fetishism of the Commodity and its Secret'. The conclusion is that only through a proper grasp of the dialectical method can the full systematic significance and implications of Marx's account of commodity fetishism be uncovered.
This paper addresses the Marx´s theory of crisis in order to analyze the Great Recession in Spain,
a peripheral economy within the Eurozone. It is shown the underlying problem in the capacity to
generate surplus value behind the housing bubble, which in turn explain some particularities
related to the capital composition and productivity, as well as wages and finance. The document
also carries out a critic of both orthodox and heterodox approaches that focus i) on a profit
squeeze caused by labor market rigidities, ii) underconsumption because of stagnant wages, as
well as iii), finances: interest rates and indebtedness.
Los Estudios Críticos sobre la Gestión (ECG), o Critical Management Studies (CMS) en inglés, renovaron de modo meritorio el estudio de las organizaciones y del trabajo al introducir en él los conceptos de Foucault y las influencias del construccionismo. Sus investigaciones han enfatizado especialmente cómo las organizaciones modernas seducen a sus integrantes y construyen la identidad de estos en correspondencia con los objetivos de aquellas. Tomando el testigo de los ECG, veremos qué mecanismos característicos de control, y que favorecen el rendimiento de la fuerza laboral, pueblan hoy algunas empresas y sectores punteros que explotan intensivamente el conocimiento de sus empleados. Aun sin negar que la construcción de las identidades sea algo que se emplee en tales empresas, trataremos de desentrañar otros resortes a los que recurren unos mecanismos de control novedosos y especialmente adaptados a empleados altamente cualificados que han de ser productivos y creativos en la elaboración de la información para dotar a las mercancías complejas que producen de ciertas características y eliminar de ellas ciertos errores y problemas. Tras ello propondremos otro modelo de poder que se perfila en estos ámbitos (biopolítico) y que se diferencia del disciplinario, trabajado en mayor medida por los ECG. Nuestras conclusiones se apoyan en dos estudios de caso: uno en el sector TIC y otro en las empresas de animación, en los que realizamos hasta cuarenta entrevistas, aunque también recurrimos a otros materiales.
The Marxist geographer, David Harvey, has written extensively and influentially about the production of space under capitalism, and in particular, uneven geographical development (UGD). This paper is a Marxist critique of Harvey’s theory of UGD. It presents his theory around six inter-connected theses: spatial concentration thesis, spatial dispersal thesis, surplus absorption thesis, UGD-as-ideology thesis and UGD-associated political thesis. His theory has shed light on certain aspects of the internal relation between capitalist accumulation and UGD, giving due emphasis to UGD’s contradictory character. It is, however, problematic on multiple grounds. It under-stresses the class relation, including the value-relation, between capital and labour, and correlatively, fetishizes the power of spatial relations. While Harvey connects UGD to capitalist crisis, his theory of crisis is deeply inadequate. His theory also fails to systematically integrate the insights of state theory into it, and to the extent that the state is present, its essential class character remains under-emphasized. Finally, Harvey draws some conclusions about anti-capitalist political practice from his theory of UGD which are problematic from a Marxist vantage point. In particular, his view of the concept of the proletariat in Marxism and his skepticism towards the role of the proletariat in the fight against capital are contestable.
In this article, the economic crisis from the US perspective is analyzed, using a Marxist approach. As the so-called Great Recession constitutes a general crisis of the capitalist economy at world level, this article intends to provide an analytical framework to explain it from the profitability of capital point of view, while emphasizing the meaning of the real estate bubble and the placement of the US economy in the world system. In doing so, an additional objective of this article is to provide elements to reveal the limitations of the conceptions of the theory of the crisis based on income distribution, finance, neoliberalism, and generally any aspect outside the core of the process of capitalist valorization as the key explaining factor.
The effects of the sub-prime global financial crisis have had devastating economic consequences worldwide. The bursting of the housing bubble in the United States began in 2007 and quickly spread to most of the developed countries of the world, later arriving in many developing countries. Looking at the 30 most advanced capitalist economies members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the drop in output and income due to the crisis was 6.5% in 2009 (Roberts, 2009: 1). The ultimate outcome was the collapse of significant financial institutions, and more importantly, a major adjustment of financial corporations and the stock market.
Whereas most previous and later discussions of Marx’s transformation of values into prices of production have focused on his mathematical procedure, Henryk Grossman addressed the logic of its place in the structure of Capital. On this basis he criticised underconsumptionist and disproportionality theorists of economic crises for inappropriately basing their accounts on the level of analysis of the value schemas in the second volume of Capital. Such a criticism cannot be made of Grossman’s and Marx’s explanation of systemic crises in terms of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall. Grossman’s article still provides insights into Marx’s analysis of capitalism and his theory of economic crises, unsurpassed in the subsequent literature.
Some argue that the “co-creative labors” of “prosumers,” who often work for free on social media sites, represent new types of exploitation insofar that they provide novel ways for capitalists to accumulate surplus value. For others, however, prosumers illustrate how capitalism is now dominated by commercial and noncommercial informational networks that build brand value in innovative ways, especially through “immaterial” relations of communication and information. This article argues that each perspective has limitations. By working from an alternative Marxist perspective the article outlines some of these limitations and then argues that co-creative labor and prosumers are best explored as representing unproductive labor that helps transfer, but not produce, already generated surplus value from the productive to unproductive spheres of the global economy. Through their free labor, prosumers thus have the potential to cut costs for new media companies in the unproductive sphere of the economy. The article further suggests that the “unproductive” actions of prosumers are compatible with a financialized form of knowledge capitalism.
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