The End of Three Ideological Eras: What Is Next for the Russian Economy? (original) (raw)

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.

Karl Marx's Theory of Capitalism Exposition, Critique, and Appraisal

This book gives a clear synthesis of Marx’s theory of Capitalism and its relation with economic theory as it evolved over the course of the last 300 years. It places Marx’s though in perspective, comparing it with the main aspects of the economic theories that preceded it, including not only the Classical Adam Smith and David Ricardo but also economists like Cantillon, Turgot, and Ramsay that Marx chose to ignore with respect to the crucial issue of entrepreneurship because it was incompatible with his Theory of Surplus Value. But the book also contrasts Marx’s theory with Walras’, the Neoclassical economist whose influence on contemporary mainstream economic theory was most lasting. The analytical aspects of Marx’s theory are rigorously expressed by means of the technique of Input-Output Analysis, which is explained from the most elementary level in order to make the book self-contained. Each of the multiple topics of Marx’s complex and refined theory is explained in detail, including his theory of money, the heterogeneity in kinds of labor and in productive techniques, the turnover of capital, Simple and Extended Reproduction, his theory of the economic cycle, his theory of ground rent, his theory of productive and unproductive labor, and his view of the main tendencies of capitalist society. The book is structured in accordance with the development process of Marx’s thought. Hence, it begins with the life project he generated in his youth and drove him from the study of history and philosophy to that of Political Economy, on the one hand, and political praxis, on the other. Hence, Parts I, II, and IV of the book respectively address A) the philosophical-methodological foundations of his scientific endeavor (his Historical Materialism); B) his scientific theory of capitalist society as expressed in Capital; and C) his political thought and praxis, which had enormous effects over the course of the 20th century. Part III of the book addresses our critique of Marx’s theory of Capitalism. Beyond our criticisms, however, the book shows that Marx made important contributions to the comprehension of the functioning of Capitalism in the more conventional part of his theory, which we denominate ‘exoteric’ in order to contrast it with his ‘esoteric’ Theory of Surplus Value which was the foundation of his view of the exploitation of wage labor in Capitalism.

The Life and Death of Stalinism A Resurrection of Marxist Theory

1989

In view of the incredibly widespread nature of the distortions of Marxism, our first task is to restore the true doctrine of Marx." Lenin, The State and Revolution 6 ences among, and class differentiations within, the third-world countries. 8. We use "West" and "East" to denote the blocs of (mainly) Euro pean and North American countries allied, respectively, to the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II. Among the geographical oddities that result is that Japan, Australia and New Zealand belong to the "West." As well, "American" will sometimes refer to the United States alone when this meaning is clear from the context. 9. "Proletariat" as used here is synonymous with working class; "bourgeoisie" means the capitalist class of the traditional capitalist societies. The "petty bourgeoisie" is the class of small capitalists, including peasants, who employ little or no non-family labor. Whereas the "middle class" means not the bourgeoisie, as it did in Marx's day, but the various layers of professionals, ideologists, bureaucrats, managers and supervisors described in later chapters. February 1990 24 MODES OF EXPLOITATION Capital opens with this brief paragraph: "The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as 'an immense collection of commodities,' its unit being the single commodity. Our investigation must therefore begin with the analysis of a commodity." 1 Marx begins his analysis with commodities, and for many Marxists that is where it ends. The clue to Marx's real meaning, however, is in the wording presents itself-or in an alternative English translation, appears. Marx used such terms deliberately, to distinguish between appearance and essence. His volumes of economic work are devoted to exploring the reality beneath the appearance. The determining factor of capitalism is not simply the existence of commodities but rather the commodification of labor. This defines the system's specific mode of exploitation, the way the ruling class appropriates the surplus product created by the producers. To see that this was Marx's view, we first note that the key to any society lies in the struggle between its ruling and producing classes. Thus the Communist Manifesto begins: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman-in a word, oppressor and oppressed-stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open, fight, a fight that each time ended either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large or in the common ruin of the contending classes." The main battlefield of the class struggle is the surplus product. What distinguishes one form of society from another is the way in which the ruling class exploits the producing class; that is, the way the surplus product is appropriated: "The essential difference between the various economic social formations, between for instance, a society based on slave labor and one based on wage labor, lies only in the mode in which this surplus labor is in each case extracted from the actual producer." 2 Near the end of Capital Marx outlines the full significance of the difference between modes of exploitation: "The specific economic form in which unpaid surplus labor is pumped out of the direct producers determines the relationship of rulers and ruled, as it grows directly out of production itself and in turn reacts ____________________

Marx\u27s Democratic Critique of Capitalism and Its Implications for a Viable Socialism

2014

This paper argues that Marx’s critique of capitalism is not, as commonly believed, a critique of the “free market.” I argue that the “market” under capitalism should be understood as a three-fold market—for goods and services, for labor and for capital. I argue that Marx’s critique is essentially a critique of the latter two markets, and not the first. Hence theoretical space opens up for “market socialism.” I proceed to elaborate briefly what specific institutions might comprise an economically viable socialism that would not be vulnerable to Marx’s critique

Economic Theory and Ideology in Marx and Modern Economic Analysis

1996

The collection of essays edited by Giovanni Caravale has the explicit aim of letting the reader know the principal positions that have characterized the long-lasting debate in the themes of Marxian economics. In particular, the book is concerned with the contributions of those authors who recognize the relevance of Piero Sraffa's analysis for the interpretation of Marxian economic thought, showing that, even among these authors, opinions on the topic are deeply different. The book consists of two volumes: the first one, "Values, Prices and Exploitation, " deals with the main theme of Marxian value theory, while the second, "The Future of Capitalism and the History of Thought," deals with discussion of the law of the falling rate of profit and of the role of Marx's theory in the history of economic thought. (JEL B12

A.A. Popovici - Program of the new site marxianeconomics.wordpress.com (10.XI.2016)

The works listed here (nearly 500 books and articles) can be viewed and downloaded immediately. I wanted to offer everyone interested the chance to read the fundamental economic works of Marx and also a wide variety of old and recent works about the most important problems of Marxist economic science. I tried to represent all currents of thoughts from within the Marxist economic sciences, along with their mutual critics or about other currents (neo-classicism or “heterodox” schools) from the whole of the economic sciences. I think that, along with these, one should also have access to the main critical works against the Marxist economic theory. All voices must be heard in a dialogue, even if it is a polemic, and Marxists should be capable of coming up with a proper answer to those critics and not to deny them just because they belong to the enemy camp. True science can only benefit from this type of dialogue. I am not against a social role of economics, but against its politicization during research. The goal of science must be the truth, and this goal must reign over the others, which cannot be adequately achieved otherwise. This could be also expressed as a necessity of turning practical consequences of the Marxian economics not into political ‘weapons’, but into social ‘tools’. Psychologically, this would be a passage from a destructive, negativist, and sometime resenting approach, to a constructive, participative, and empathic one. We need neither science for science, nor science with (political) tendency, but SCIENCE FOR TRUTH.