Reading Capital, Reading Historical Capitalisms

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 133
Author(s):  
Samir Amin
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Private Property ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
Historical Reality ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The Social ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
Mode Of Production

Marx's Capital presents a rigorous scientific analysis of the capitalist mode of production and capitalist society, and how they differ from earlier forms. Volume 1 delves into the heart of the problem. It directly clarifies the meaning of the generalization of commodity exchanges between private property owners (and this characteristic is unique to the modern world of capitalism, even if commodity exchanges had existed earlier), specifically the emergence and dominance of value and abstract social labor.… Volume 2 demonstrates why and how capital accumulation functions, more specifically, why and how accumulation successfully integrates the exploitation of labor in its reproduction and overcomes the effects of the social contradiction that it represents.… Volume 3 of Capital is different. Here Marx moves from the analysis of capitalism in its fundamental aspects (its "ideal average") to that of the historical reality of capitalism.… To move from the reading of Capital (and particularly of volumes 1 and 2) to that of historical capitalisms at successive moments of their deployment has its own requirements, even beyond reading all of Marx and Engels.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

The Compatibility of Freedom and Necessity in Marx’s Idea of Communist Society

2021 ◽  
pp. 162-191
Author(s):  
David James
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Communist Society ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practical Necessity ◽  
Historical Necessity ◽  
Mode Of Production

It is argued that the manner in which workers organize production and determine its goals explains how freedom and necessity are reconciled in Marx’s idea of communist society. Freedom and necessity are reconciled, moreover, in such a way that both self-realization and engagement in activities that possess some intrinsic value become possible, whereas this is not the case for workers in capitalist society. Communist society is explained in terms of a concept of freedom that incorporates three distinct types of freedom, whereas this concept of freedom is incompatible with the constraints generated by the capitalist mode of production and the social relations that emerge on its basis. The theme of how historical materialism is committed to the idea of historical necessity and seeks to explain this necessity in terms of practical necessity is then introduced.

scholarly journals Laws of Concentration and Centralization of Capital: A Modern Review

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sourish Dutta
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Time ◽  
Competitive Power ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Size Of Firms ◽  
Mode Of Production

Though the basic (the late 1860s) Marxian model, under the capitalist mode of production, assumes perfect competitive or contestable ambience within the market by means of a large number of trivial firms in each industry, Marx was cognizant of the growing size of firms, the subsequent dwindling of competition, and the evolution of monopolistic or anti-competitive power. Hence, the capital has the inclination for concentration and centralization in the hands of the richest and big capitalists. Actually, the concentration and centralization of capital are two capital accumulation (or self-expansion of capital) techniques. Such concentration and centralization of capital can be clearly detected at this modern time, especially in the USA, in the enormous occurrences of mergers, acquisitions and conglomerates. In this assignment, henceforth, I will be trying to cultivate an analytical discussion about these two interlinked concepts and their implications and repercussions in this modern world of capitalism.

scholarly journals Laws of Concentration and Centralization of Capital: A Modern Review

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sourish Dutta
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Modern Time ◽  
Competitive Power ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Size Of Firms ◽  
Mode Of Production

Though the basic (the late 1860s) Marxian model, under the capitalist mode of production, assumes (more or less) perfect competitive or contestable ambience within the market by means of a large number of trivial firms in each industry, Marx was cognizant of the growing size of firms, the subsequent dwindling of competition, and the evolution of monopolistic or anti-competitive power. Hence, the capital has the inclination for concentration and centralization in the hands of the richest and big capitalists. Actually, the concentration and centralization of capital are two capital accumulation (or self-expansion of capital) techniques. Such concentration and centralization of capital can be clearly detected at this modern time, especially in the USA, in the enormous occurrences of mergers, acquisitions and conglomerates. In this assignment, henceforth, I will be trying to cultivate an analytical discussion about these two interlinked concepts and their implications and repercussions in this modern world of capitalism.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louçã Francisco ◽  
Ash Michael
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Social Consequences ◽  
First Century ◽  
Capitalist System ◽  
Global Restructuring ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Political Decision Making ◽  
Mode Of Production

This book investigates two questions, how did finance become hegemonic in the capitalist system; and what are the social consequences of the rise of finance? We do not dwell on other topics, such as the evolution of the mode of production or the development of class conflict over the longer run. Our theme is not the genesis, history, dynamics, or contradictions of capitalism but, instead, we address the rise of financialization beginning in the last quarter of the twentieth century and continuing into the twenty-first century. Therefore, we investigate the transnationalization of the circuits and processes of capital accumulation that originated the expansion and financialization of the mechanisms of production, social reproduction, and hegemony, including the ideology, the functioning of the states, and the political decision making. We do not discuss the prevailing neoliberalism as an ideology, although we pay attention to the creation and diffusion of ideas, since we sketch an overview of the process of global restructuring of production and finance leading to the prevalence of the shadow economy....

scholarly journals Die Außenansicht der europäischen Linken

1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (92) ◽  
pp. 427-449
Author(s):  
Samir Amin
Keyword(s):  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
World System ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
The Third ◽  
Social Governance ◽  
System Type ◽  
World Level ◽  
First World ◽  
Labour Power ◽  
Mode Of Production

In the framework of a world-system type of analysis, the perspectives of the European left after the decline of Soviel type socialism are described as a response to the polarization between the Third and the First World: In contrast to the capitalist mode of production in the centre, which operates as a market-based integration of the circulation of capital, of commodities and of labour power, labour in the periphery is blocked. In view of the contradiction between capital accumulation on a world-level and political and social governance on national levels, a socialist strategy should be based on a new internationalism, emphasizing regional alliances whose expansion is coupled to the increase in the unfettered mobility of labour.

scholarly journals Reflexões sobre consumo consciente à luz do binômio cultura e ideologia / Reflections on conscious consumption in the light of the binomial culture and ideology

Profanações ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 62
Author(s):  
Fábio Rodrigues Alves ◽  
Dulce Whitaker
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Environmental Problems ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
Television Advertisements ◽  
Communication Equipment ◽  
Scientific Sense ◽  
Mode Of Production

O eixo em torno do qual gira esta pesquisa, é um argumento que pode contrariar o senso comum e mesmo parte do senso científico. A pesquisa, desenvolvido a partir de conceitos marxistas, parte do desígnio de que a produção, impulsionada pelo modo de produção capitalista, e não o consumo, é a responsável pela devastação ambiental. Nesse diapasão, acreditamos que não se deve responsabilizar apenas o consumidor pelos problemas ambientais hodiernos, haja vista que empresários capitalistas se abrigam sob um véu eco-ideológico, lastreado no modo de produção capitalista. Ademais, o consumidor, como elo de uma cadeia inflexível de produção e reprodução, apenas cumpre seu papel e realiza o ato do consumo. Nesse desiderato, a produção cria as mercadorias que se tornarão necessidades para os consumidores, devidamente agraciadas com o seu próprio fetiche. Ainda, visando à divulgação e/ou impulsionamento das vendas das mercadorias produzidas, os empresários contratam os mais criativos publicitários, e por meio daquele sagrado equipamento de comunicação, a televisão, as propagandas televisivas, mesclam cultura e ideologia, e tornam o consumo um ato cultuado na sociedade capitalista.AbstractThe axis around which turns this research, is an argument that might contradict common sense and even part of the scientific sense. The research, developed from Marxist concepts of the design of the production, driven by the capitalist mode of production, not consumption, is responsible for environmental devastation. In this vein, we believe that we should not just blame the consumer by modern environmental problems, given that capitalist entrepreneurs take shelter under an eco-ideological veil, backed the capitalist mode of production. Moreover, the consumer, as a link in an inflexible chain of production and reproduction, only fulfills its role and performs the act of consumption. In this goal, the production creates goods that will become needs for consumers, duly honored with his own fetish. Still, in order to disclose and / or boosting sales of goods produced, entrepreneurs hire the best advertising creative, and through that sacred communication equipment, television, television advertisements, mix culture and ideology, and make the consumer an act worshiped in capitalist society.

The multispatial governance of social and economic policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Bob Jessop
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Body ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Social Body ◽  
The Social ◽  
Politics Of The Body

This chapter distinguishes Foucault’s approach from the work of Anglo-Foucauldian scholars. The latter adopted a microsocial perspective, focused on the programmes and rationalities of government that work across multiple alliances between different actors, and argued for bottom-up civil society responsibilization. Foucault was not only state-phobic but also suspicious of political action based on civil society. His theoretical interests shifted from the micro-physics of disciplinary society and its anatomo-politics of the body to the more general strategic codification of a plurality of discourses, practices, technologies of power, and institutional ensembles around a specific governmental rationality concerned with the social body (bio-power) in a consolidated capitalist society. This is reflected in the statification of government and the governmentalization of the state. This led to his analyses of sovereignty, territorial statehood, and state power and the role of civil society in this regard and to less well-substantiated claims about their articulation to the logic of capital accumulation.

Fichtes Umbildung der transzendentalen Logik zu einer philosophischen Handlungstheorie

2014 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerd Irrlitz
Keyword(s):  
Private Property ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Philosophical Theory ◽  
Central Importance ◽  
Transcendental Logic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Property Owners ◽  
Structural Concept ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThis paper interprets Fichte’s transformation of the Enlightenment’s idea of self-consciousness into the concept of the ego as a transformation of transcendental logic into a philosophical theory of action. This transformation was of central importance for his critique of Kant as well as his rejection of both Schelling’s and Hegel’s ontologies of spirit, whose post-revolutionary determinism Fichte repudiated. Fichte developed his theory of action under the social premise of preindustrial labor, accentuating that social symmetry should be maintained against the tendency of property concentration amongst private property owners. His transformation of the concept of rationality (attained through transcendental logic) into a relational differentiation of the subject (1), its objectification (2), and the synthesis of both as an alteration between acting and suffering (3) open the path from an as yet - in terms of its presuppositions - monological concept of self-consciousness to a structural concept of action.

Urban Design in Capitalist Society

1988 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-474 ◽  
Author(s):  
R J King
Keyword(s):  
Urban Design ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Social System ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Capitalist Society ◽  
Design Practice ◽  
The Social ◽  
System Degeneration ◽  
Fundamental Transformation ◽  
The Aesthetic

Urban design is concerned with the purposive production of urban meaning, through the coordinating design of conjunctures or relationships between spatial elements. It is argued that, in capitalist society, this production of meaning has typically supported shifts in capital accumulation, social reproduction, and legitimation in ways crucial to the reinforcing of dominant interests. Its effect has been to help counteract instability, system ‘degeneration’ (from the standpoint of such interests), and any fundamental transformation of the social system, This effect is termed ‘counteraction 1’. From considerations of urban design as production of values and as a body of practice, it is concluded that an urban design practice that is counteractive to dominant interests is, however, possible (‘counteraction 2’), Such a practice will be characterised by three ‘rules’, relating to the aesthetic program, the discursive penetration of the social context of urban design, and the breaking down of the present autonomisation and obfuscation of design as a domain of social interaction or discourse.

scholarly journals Equity and the Social Reproduction of Capital

Pólemos ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Gearey
Keyword(s):  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Equity Capital ◽  
Finance Capital ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Mode Of Production ◽  
The Way

Abstract This essay draws on Marxist thinking to argue that equity is essential to the social reproduction of finance capital. Equitable doctrines can be seen as assemblages that define and reproduce the way in which money, people and property relate to each other. Assemblages of equity/capital are ideological complexes – ways of being, thinking and acting that effectively legitimize a particular mode of production. The role that equity plays in the functioning of a regime of profit making is effectively concealed from the student of the subject. Feminist scholars have perhaps been the most successful in drawing attention to the “hidden” patriarchal logic of the subject. However, unless feminist insights are linked to an understanding of the social reproduction of capital, we cannot appreciate how modes of capital accumulation operate under cover of the legitimizing effects of equitable doctrines.

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