Socialdem. 21st Century

From volume 3 of Capital in Marx’s discussion of ground rent: “We need not dwell upon actual slave economy (which likewise passes through a development from the patriarchal system, working pre-eminently for home use, to the plantation system, working for the world market) nor upon that management of estates, under which the landlords carry on agriculture for their own account, own all the instruments of production, and exploit the labor of free or unfree servants, who are paid in kind or in...

There is a crucial passage in volume 2 of Capital as follows: “In a slave system, the money-capital invested in the purchase of slaves plays the role of the fixed capital in money-form, which is but gradually replaced after the expiration of the active life period of the slaves. Among the Athenians, therefore, the gain realized by a slave owner through the industrial employment of his slaves, or indirectly by hiring them out to other industrial employers (for instance mine owners), was...

Finally, some on the mainstream British Left are starting to get that the EU is a disastrous anti-democratic enterprise inimical to the Left, as reported here: Owen Jones, “The Left must put Britain’s EU withdrawal on the Agenda,” Guardian, 15 July, 2015. It is about time too.Owen Jones hits the nail on the head when he points out in this article that the EU Fiscal Compact (or the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union) of 2012 effectively...

Some very good points here, but Farage goes wrong when he fails to see that Greece can protect its banks by just converting domestic deposits into drachmas from Euros. Bill Mitchell has a better analysis of the need for a “Grexit” here.[embedded content]Another minor point: real GDP collapse in the US in the Great Depression was about 25%, not 16% (as Farage says). A nice graph comparing Greece from 2008 to 2015 and the US in the Great Depression can be seen here.

Chapter 6 of volume 1 of Capital is called “Sale and Purchase of Labour-Power,” and it discusses the nature and value of labour-power. This chapter ends section 2 of volume 1 of Capital.Surplus value is not created by the transactions M–C or C–M in the circuit of capital (Marx 1990: 270). Marx argues that it is the special commodity called labour-power that is the source of surplus value (Marx 1990: 270).Marx explains: “In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a...

This is the British UKIP leader Nigel Farage speaking in the European Parliament a few days ago when the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was present.[embedded content]And, no, I haven’t gone conservative, nor would I endorse UKIP’s domestic economic policies – which would involve a nasty dose of neoliberal poison, probably worse than the conventional neoliberalism. And, yes, we all know well that some people who vote for UKIP are xenophobic and bigoted. They also have an unhinged...

I don’t always agree with Chomsky, but what he says here about Marxism is spot on. The interesting and insightful individual concepts in Marx’s Capital – say, the idea of the monetary production economy, endogenous money,* the rudiments of aggregate demand theory, etc. – should be taken up in contemporary economy theory and developed. The other absurd, dogmatic and untenable aspects of Marxism – the labour theory of value, falling rate of profit idea, etc. – should be utterly rejected. Marx...

Below is the video of Steve Keen’s recent talk at the FT/Alphaville conference in London, where he discusses why the world economy crashed in 2008, and why private-debt-induced stagnation is likely to be the fate of many Western countries for the foreseeable future. More details here.One of his more interesting predictions is an economic crisis in China in the next 1 to 2 years, given China’s own sharply rising private debt to GDP ratio. Steve Keen also recommends Richard Vague’s book The...

Chapter 5 of volume 1 of Capital is called “Contradictions in the General Formula for Capital,” and is a brief chapter that describes what Marx sees as problems with the general formula M–C–M′. The primary problem is: where does surplus value come from and how is it created? (Brewer 1984: 35; Harvey 2010: 92). In essence, Marx in this chapter argues that it does not originate within the process of circulation (that is, the sphere of exchange of commodities through money).The circuit of...

Chapter 4 of volume 1 of Capital is called “The General Formula for Capital,” and begins Part 2 of that work (which consists of Chapters 4, 5, and 6). Chapter 4 presents Marx’s theory of the essence of commodity production under capitalism: the desire for money as expressed in the formula money–commodity–money (M–C–M), which is the circuit of capital (Brewer 1984: 34).Capitalism involves the production and circulation of commodities, and these are its “starting-point” and historical...