Socialdem. 21st Century

The working day under Marx’s theory in volume 1 of Capital can be conceptualised in the diagram below, where there is a total working day of 12 hours. Although the total working day in any particular industry can be variable, there are two parts of the working day as follows: (1) necessary labour-time, which is “determined by the working time required for the reproduction of the labour-power of the labourer himself” (Marx 1906: 256), and(2) the surplus labour-time (Marx 1990: 341). Let us...

In a word: no.Why? Because an economy with more and more automation based on private enterprise and private capitalist production could still sell its output and obtain money profits, if a government managed the demand-side of the economy by providing a guaranteed income (with, say, taxes on consumption, property, and ownership of financial and real assets and returns from those assets, with the shortfall covered by central bank money creation). As long as the balance of payments functioned...

Well, sort of agrees in the post that can be read here: Jehu, “Reply to LK: How Labor Theory of Value destroys Fiat ‘Money’,” The Real Movement, June 12, 2015. My original post is here.We must remember that for Marx money is a special commodity that itself must have a labour value so it can function as a universal medium of exchange and numéraire. That is the basis by which money can exchange for other produced commodities under the law of value in volume 1 of Capital. But fiat money...

Chapter 13 of volume 1 of Capital is called “Co-operation” and it deals with the concept of cooperation of workers in production process and with historical aspects of the development of capitalist modes of production.Marx sees cooperation in capitalism as having three historical forms (1) simple co-operation, (2) manufacture, and (3) modern industry, but the earlier forms can persist within modern capitalism (Brewer 1984: 50).At the beginning of capitalist history, Marx sees changes in the...

Chapter 12 of volume 1 of Capital is called “The Concept of Relative Surplus Value” and it deals with yet further aspects of surplus value.Marx points to another way of increasing surplus value. He considers this representation of the working day: Working Day 1: A-----------B--CWorking Day 2: A-----B′---B--C AB represents the necessary labour-time equivalent to the value of maintaining and reproducing workers. BC therefore represents surplus labour.In Working Day 2, the total length of the...

From Louis Boudin’s book The Theoretical System of Karl Marx in the Light of Recent Criticism (1920): “The appearance in 1894 of the third volume of Capital created a sensation in interested circles. While it does not stand in any direct relation to the Revisionist movement, it can hardly be denied that it made its formal argumentation more plausible. The solution of the Great Contradiction contained in the third volume, and the rest of the matter therein contained and intimately connected...

Bernie Sanders won in the New Hampshire Democratic primary and beat Hillary Clinton.[embedded content]And people on the left should take careful notice of Sanders’ outstanding good sense in opposing open borders, as we see in the video below.[embedded content]In this respect, Bernie Sanders’ views are just like those of Ralph Nader.[embedded content]The concept of open borders is a lunatic libertarian idea, whether from the anarcho-capitalist libertarians or far left libertarians.Bizarrely,...

Marx published volume 1 of Capital in 1867. He never published any further volumes of the work in his lifetime. Early reviews and critiques of volume 1 included Eugen Dühring (1867; 1871; 1875), Carl Knies (1873), Maurice Block (1872; 1884a; 1884b), Wilhelm Roscher (1874), Achille Loria (1884), Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1884); Philip H. Wicksteed (1884 = Wicksteed 1933), Richard Theodore Ely (1883), George Bernard Shaw (1885), Knut Wicksell (1893 = Wicksell 1954) and Vilfredo Pareto (1893).In...

From Alexander Gray’s book The Development of Economic Doctrine: An Introductory Survey (1956): “… the Marxian explanation suffers from two inner inherent contradictions (or two aspects of the same contradiction) from which it never escaped, and on which it finally made shipwreck in the third volume. In the first place, if all profit springs from variable capital and none from machinery, then it is the height of folly ever to introduce machinery, and it is a poor explanation to suggest that...

Chapter 11 of volume 1 of Capital is called “The Rate and Mass of Surplus-Value” (Marx 1990: 417), and it deals with further aspects of surplus value.In essence, Marx makes a number of points in this chapter as follows: (1) the rate of surplus value is dependent on the duration of the working day and the value of labour-power;(2) the total mass of surplus value can be measured by s/v multiplied by the value of total variable capital, and capitalists wish to maximise the mass of...