Production versus Capital in Motion: A Reply to Fine and Saad-Filho

2008 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 181-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Kincaid
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Capital Allocation ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Organic Composition ◽  
Emergence Patterns ◽  
Circuit Of Capital ◽  
Composition Of Capital

A further critique of Fine and Saad-Filho's reading of Marxist political economy: (a) it neglects the monetary dimension of Marx's analysis; (b) it focuses too much on production, and on the organic composition of capital, treated in isolation from the overall circuit of capital. An alternative theorisation is proposed, stressing what will now be called emergence patterns in Marx's value theory (his term was laws of tendency), and giving due weight to circulation, realisation, competition and capital allocation.

Production vs. Realisation: A Critique of Fine and Saad-Filho on Value Theory

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 137-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jim Kincaid
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Composition Of Capital

AbstractThis article assess two important recent books on Marx's political economy and argues that, despite many virtues, there are some crucial limitations in their approach to Marx's political economy. Ben Fine's and Alfredo Saad-Filho's Marx's 'Capital' and The Value of Marx by Saad-Filho place too much explanatory weight on the composition of capital, giving too little attention to Marx's analysis of money, and to the processes of circulation and realisation.

Reproduction and Crisis in Capitalist Economies

2018 ◽  
pp. 278-298
Author(s):  
Deepankar Basu
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Aggregate Demand ◽  
Financial Fragility ◽  
Surplus Value ◽  
Organic Composition ◽  
Circuit Of Capital ◽  
Marxist Tradition ◽  
Composition Of Capital

An economic crisis in capitalism is a deep and prolonged interruption of the economy-wide circuit of capital. Crises emerge from within the logic of capitalism’s operation, and are manifestations of the inherently contradictory process of capital accumulation. The Marxist tradition conceptualizes two types of crisis tendencies in capitalism: a crisis of deficient surplus value and a crisis of excess surplus value. Two mechanisms that become important in crises of deficient surplus value are the rising organic composition of capital and the profit squeeze: two mechanisms that are salient in crises of excess surplus value are problems of insufficient aggregate demand and increased financial fragility. This chapter offers a synthetic and synoptic account of the Marxist literature on capitalist crisis.

scholarly journals A "Primeira Versão" da Teoria da Crise de Marx: a queda da massa de mais-valia social e o limite interno absoluto do capital

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-203
Author(s):  
Nuno Miguel Cardoso Machado
Keyword(s):  
Surplus Value ◽  
Capitalist Economy ◽  
Organic Composition ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Law ◽  
Rate Of Profit ◽  
Composition Of Capital

Abstract Marx's theory of crisis is usually associated with the law of the tendential fall in the rate of profit presented in volume three of Capital. According to Marx, the rising organic composition of capital - the fact that variable capital grows in absolute terms, but falls relatively because of the faster growth of constant capital - results in the fall of the general rate of profit, which undermines the reproduction of capital. In this article I will argue that: i) there is a "first version" of Marx's theory of crisis, outlined especially in the Grundrisse, which ascribes the secular crisis of the capitalist economy to the absolute decline of living labour and, therefore, to the falling mass of socially produced surplus-value; ii) only this "first version" of the theory of crisis allows the absolute internal limit of capital to be deduced consistently.

Chapter 9 Formation of a General Rate of Profit (Average Rate of Profit) and Transformation of The Values of Commodities into Prices of Production

Capital ◽  
2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Marx
Keyword(s):  
Average Rate ◽  
Organic Composition ◽  
Rate Of Profit ◽  
Labour Power ◽  
Means Of Production ◽  
Composition Of Capital

The organic composition of capital depends at any given time on two circumstances: first, on the technical relation of labour-power employed to the mass of the means of production employed; secondly, on the price of these means of production. This composition, as we have...

Economics and Political Economy Today: Introduction to the Symposium on Fine and Milonakis

2012 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Ashman
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
Economic Reason ◽  
Historical Reasoning ◽  
Subjective Value ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sphere Of Influence

AbstractEconomics has long been the ‘dismal science’. The crisis in classical political economy at the end of the nineteenth century produced radically differing intellectual responses: Marx’s reconstitution of value theory on the basis of his dialectical method, the marginalists’ development of subjective value theory, and the historical school’s advocacy of inductive and historical reasoning. It is against this background that economics was established as a discrete academic discipline, consciously modelling itself on maths and physics and developing its focus on theorising exchange. This entailed extraordinary reductionism, with humans regarded as rational, self-interested actors, and class, society, history and ‘the social’ being excised from economic analysis. On the basis of this narrowing of its concerns, particularly from the 1980s onwards, economics has sought to expand its sphere of influence through a form of imperialism which seeks to apply mainstream economic approaches to other social sciences and sees economics as ‘the universal grammar of social science’. The implications of this shift are discussed in Ben Fine and Dimitris Milonakis’s two volumes, where they analyse the fate of the social, the political and the historical in economic thought, and assess the future for an inter-disciplinary critique of economic reason.

Risking value theory in the political economy of finance and nature

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brett Christophers
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Financial Innovation ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
Index Insurance ◽  
Climate Finance ◽  
Financial Instruments ◽  
Catastrophe Bonds ◽  
Economy Of Nature

Responding to calls for geographers to re-engage value theory in examining the political economy of nature, this article questions the capacity of such theory to grasp nature’s growing representation, valuation and exchange through financial instruments ranging from catastrophe bonds to carbon credits and from green bonds to index insurance. Drawing on and extending recent debates in political economy, it submits that understanding the contemporary nexus of climate change and financial innovation requires incorporating risk into value theory – it requires, that is, ‘risking’ value theory. Parsing the literature on climate finance, the article demonstrates how such risking might be achieved.

scholarly journals Marx and the Global South: Connecting History and Value Theory

Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 146-161 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Pradella
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Global South ◽  
Value Theory ◽  
Wage Labour ◽  
Global Futures

This article interrogates Marx’s critique of political economy in the context of the global South and southern epistemologies. It first traces the contradictory roots of a non-Eurocentric conception of history within Adam Smith. Recovering Marx’s silenced sociologies of colonialism in his writings and notebooks, it then shows that Marx incorporated colonialism and imperialism into his analysis of accumulation. The antagonism between wage-labour and capital needs to be understood as a global tendency, encompassing a hierarchy of forms of exploitation and oppression. Marx’s support for the Taiping revolution (1850–1864) played a crucial, albeit often ignored, role in his theorisation. It allowed him to recognise the living potential for anti-colonial struggles and international solidarities, thus breaking with Eurocentric accounts of history. The article concludes that it is crucial to sociology’s global futures that it reconnects with the critique of political economy, and actively learns from the anti-imperialist South.

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