Marx's Capital – 'scientifically erroneous and without application to the modern world' (original) (raw)
Related papers
Historical Materialism, 2010
Andrew Kliman's Reclaiming Marx's 'Capital' sets out to refute the 'myth' that Marx's original presentation of the theory of the value is internally inconsistent. A century ago, Bortkiewicz purported to demonstrate that Marx's mistake was his failure to adopt simultaneous valuation. Thereafter, twentieth-century Marxian economics worked out a 'corrected' version of Marx's original theory, culminating in Steedman's 1977 Marx after Sraffa. Conclusions Marx himself deemed central were dropped, prominently including the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. But simultaneous valuation is absolutely incompatible with Marx's first and fundamental premise, the determination of value by labour-time. On the other hand, if Marx's major theoretical conclusions do consistently follow from his premises, including the transformation of values into prices of production, then the quantitative dimension of his value-theory is internally consistent after all and stands in no need of correction on this score. Advocating a temporal, single-system interpretation, Kliman shows how 'two simple modifications' eliminate 'all of the alleged inconsistencies in the quantitative dimension of Marx's value theory': valuation is temporal, and values and prices are determined interdependently. Kliman's refutation is sound, but his claim to know Marx's intentions, in E.D. Hirsch's sense, is questionable.
The Value of Marx: Political Economy for Contemporary Capitalism
Karl Marx’s writings provide a uniquely insightful explanation of the inner workings of capitalism, which other schools of thought generally have difficulty explaining. From this vantage point, Marx’s works can help to explain important features and economic problems of our age, and the limits of their possible solutions. For example, the necessity and origin of money, the growth of the wage-earning class, uneven development, cycles and crises, and the relative impoverishment of the workers, leading to debt and overwork. The Value of Marx demonstrates that: • Capitalist production necessarily involves conflicts in production and in distribution. • Competition is an essential feature of capitalism, but it often generates instability, crises and unemployment, showing that capitalism is not only the most productive but also the most systematically destructive mode of production in history. • Capitalist economies are unstable because of the conflicting forces of extraction, realisation, and accumulation of surplus value under competitive conditions. This instability is structural, and even the best economic policies cannot avoid it completely. The author critically reviews the methodological principles of Marx’s value analysis and the best known interpretations of his value theory. He develops an interpretation of Marx focusing primarily upon the processes and relations that regulate social and economic reproduction under capitalism. When analysed from this angle, value theory is a theory of class and exploitation. The concept of value is useful, among other reasons, because it explains capitalist exploitation in spite of the predominance of voluntary market exchanges. The most important controversies in Marxian political economy are reviewed exhaustively, and new light is thrown on the meaning and significance of Marx’s analysis and its relevance for contemporary capitalism.
Understanding Marx's theory of value: an assessment of a controversy
Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, 2008
Trois ecoles principalrs de theorie de valeur mamienne sont identifiees et situees par rapport a des sujets essentiels oh il existe une controverse en matiere de valeur, en particulier le postulat que le travail vital est l'unique source de valeur nouvelle. L'effondrement de la theorie de valeur de 1'Ccole 'orthodoxe' (Ricardo-marxiste) est attribuee aux raisonnement errone d'une conceptualisation de la valeur de 'travail exprime,' une approche rejetee de la m&me facon par les theoriciens de la valeur 'neo-orthodoxe' et 'fondamentaliste'. Cependant la comparaison des ecoles neo-orthodoxe et fondamentaliste revele que seule cette derniere est compatible avec les objectifs et les postulats essentiels de la theorie de Marx. En m&me temps, on indique que l'approche fondamentaliste ne peut &re soutenue que par un engagement explicite a l'idee que le travail abstrait (essence-m6me de la valeur) existe en tant qu'universel structure1 specifique au capitalisme. Three major schools of Marxian value theory are identified and situated in respect to some pivotal issues of the value controversy, in particular the postulate that living labour is the sole source of new value. The collapse of the 'orthodox' (Ricardian-Marxist) school of value theory is attributed to the fallacies of an 'embodied labour' conceptualization of value, an approach which has been rejected by 'neo-orthodox' and 'fundamentalist' value theorists alike. However a comparison of the neo-orthodox and fundamentalist schools reveals that only the latter remains consistent with the objectives and essential postulates of Marx's theory. At the same time, it is argued that the fundamentalist approach can only be sustained through an explicit commitment to the idea that abstract labour (as the 'substance' of value) exists as a structural 'universal' specific to capitalism. * I wish to thank David Schweitzer, Blanca Muratorio, Bob Ratner, Bob Chernomas and Derek Sayer for their helpful comments on an earlier elaboration of the ideas developed in this article (Smith, 1989). Thanks are also due to two anonymous CHSA reviewers and to Jim Curtis for a number of suggestions that have significantly strengthened the final product. The argument presented here is based on work which I carried out whilst in receipt of funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This article was
Graduate thesis for Sussex University's SPT (Social and Political Thought Program), supervised by Andrew Chitty. This paper critically examines the implications entailed in Marxian value theory brought by interpretations that stress Marx’s analysis of the value-form. Touching on areas such as the correct method of enquiry, and the aim of Marx's critique, it provides a detailed exposition of the traditional Marxian theory of value and investigates issues such as the problems of concepts like abstract labour and socially necessary labour time and substantialism in Marx’s “value”. These have led to value form theory and it ultimately identifies them as problematic enough to necessitate a break with the traditional understanding of value in Marxism towards a monetary theory of value. The reduction problem is both the central flaw at the heart of the traditional value theory, and what points towards a monetary value theory. The essay offers an elaboration of such a theory followed by a critical analysis of its implications. The implications are assessed first from the standpoint of the ontological insights of the value-form, and second the imperatives of (Marxian) critique. (1)The proposed value theory remains true to the core of the ethos of Marxist critique as a qualitative insight which illustrates how class relation determines the production and distribution of social product. (2)Beyond the merely qualitative, it remains compatible with the fundamental insight of Marxism, the law of value, asserted with reference to ideal precommensuration in production, thus remaining capable of identifying the causal mechanisms which constitute capitalist reproduction.Supplementing the conclusion is a discussion of what the value form approach entails for quantitatively-focused research, identifying the different positions of the debate and the direction in which it is heading, contextualizing those endeavours amidst a discussion of the priorities Marxist theory is to set for itself.
An Analysis of Karl Marx's Theory of Value on the Contemporary Capitalist Economy
The paper examines Karl Marx's theory of value and its implications on the contemporary capitalist economy. By doing this, the paper critically reviews the principles of Marx's value analysis by extrapolating from the writings of Karl Marx and Neo -Marxists which fits into the Marxian theory of value. The study indicates that capitalism does have an overall tendency to extract surplus value from labour provided by the workers, since it is the most malleable (influenced) of things within the confines of capitalism in the production process as noted by Marx. According to Marx, a system like capitalism, where people are coerced or forced to sell their labour in order to survive is unjust and that in the modern capitalist economy, the rate of profitability or success in production is determined by the ability to produce surplus value. In contemporary capitalist economy, during the production process, the worker uses his/her labour to produce adequate goods and services, but only receive wages enough for subsistence, hence making a surplus for the capitalist. However, the question still remains whether the labourers/workers/proletariats have a choice of selling their labour or not in order to survive in the contemporary capitalist economy as it were in orthodox capitalism?
11.[1-6]An Analysis of Karl Marx’s Theory of Value on the Contemporary Capitalist Economy
The paper examines Karl Marx's theory of value and its implications on the contemporary capitalist economy. By doing this, the paper critically reviews the principles of Marx's value analysis by extrapolating from the writings of Karl Marx and Neo -Marxists which fits into the Marxian theory of value. The study indicates that capitalism does have an overall tendency to extract surplus value from labour provided by the workers, since it is the most malleable (influenced) of things within the confines of capitalism in the production process as noted by Marx. According to Marx, a system like capitalism, where people are coerced or forced to sell their labour in order to survive is unjust and that in the modern capitalist economy, the rate of profitability or success in production is determined by the ability to produce surplus value. In contemporary capitalist economy, during the production process, the worker uses his/her labour to produce adequate goods and services, but only receive wages enough for subsistence, hence making a surplus for the capitalist. However, the question still remains whether the labourers/workers/proletariats have a choice of selling their labour or not in order to survive in the contemporary capitalist economy as it were in orthodox capitalism?
An Analysis of Marxs Theory of Value
Global Journal of Human Social Science Research, 2014
Introduction-Marx's theory of value arose out of the bid to understand the basis on which goods were exchanged. What is it that determines the quantity of a product that is exchanged with another? How is it that a bag of rice can be exchanged with two bales of cloth or why is it that both products share the same monetary value? Marx's theory was a build-up on the theories of bourgeois classical political economists, notably, Adam Smith, David Ricardo, et al. who laid down the foundation for modern day economic theory economic theory from their investigations of what exactly determined the value of a commodity. For Barbon (1696:2) "things have an intrinsic value and that the greatest number of things have their value from supplying the wants of the mind". Others like Ricardo and Smith posited that the reward for labour (wage) determined price of value of the commodity. Locke (1777:280), studying the issue of the consequences of lowering interest rates posited that "the natural value of anything consists in its fitness to supply the necessities or serve the convenience of human life". Also, some thought that this 'value' seen in exchange was a result of the importance of products, what is regarded as its usevalue. 'but that 'this property of a community is independent of the amount of labour required to appropriate its useful qualities.