Tag Archives: capitalism

Value is a social relation. As such, it is ‘immaterial but objective.’ The ‘phantom-like objectivity’ of value arises because ‘not an atom of matter enters into the objectivity of commodities as values’. Their status as values contrasts with ‘the coarsely sensuous objectivity of commodities as physical objects. We may twist and turn a single commodity as we wish; it remains impossible to grasp it as a thing possessing value.’ The value of commodities is, like many other features of social...

An international campaign by capitalist politicians and media has been unleashed against president Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuelan government. It has been used by Labour’s Blairista right wing to try to weaken Jeremy Corbyn. In Spain, the spectre of Venezuela has been held up as a warning of what a Podemos-led government would mean. The close links of Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias to Hugo Chávez regime in the past has facilitated this idea. Across Latin America this campaign has been conducted...

Imagine we lived in a feudal society in which lords exploited peasants. A defender of the system might argue that wealthy lords perform a useful service; they protect their peasants from invasion and theft thus giving them security and a little prosperity. And competition between lords should improve these services; bad lords will find their lands and peasants seized by better lords who become wealthier as a result.Such an argument would, however, miss the point. The case against feudalism...

Is capitalism still creating prosperity and well-being for the many? That’s a central question behind Re-Imagining Capitalism (Oxford University Press, November 2016), a book coedited by McKinsey’s global managing partner, Dominic Barton; York University’s Schulich School of Business dean, Dr. Dezsö J. Horváth; and Matthias Kipping, Richard E. Waugh chair of business history at the Schulich School. In this video interview, Horváth speaks with McKinsey’s Rik Kirkland about the various forms...

With Alberta and Ontario raising their minimum wage to $15 per hour, and BC possibly following suit soon, the usual suspects have begun their predictable howling about how this is a bad time, or it’s happening too fast, or how it will simply hurt those we are trying to help. It is true that increasing the minimum wage may result in slightly fewer jobs for teenagers, and slightly fewer hours for other workers – but the evidence shows that overall the effect is positive, especially for low...

This is my short response, originally posted here, to William I. Robinson's post here and Fred Magdoff's note in the comment section of that post:While I generally agree with Robinson's and Magdoff's analyses, what is absent, specifically with respect to Robinson's discussion, is a concrete assessment of the acute variables that measure the degree to which national States have the capacity to engage in power-maximizing behavior and, thus, pursue certain responses, i.e. imperialism, to the...

[embedded content] Short documentary on the limits of capitalism mostly based on an interview by Richard Wolf. I find the simplistic explanation of exploitation at the end (around minute 27:30) based on the time of work (prices proportional to labor incorporated) to be problematic (for a discussion of the Labor Theory of Value, LTV go here). At any rate, worth watching whether you agree with Wolf's interpretation of Marx and capitalism or not.

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McCloskey, Lazonick, Despin, and Shaikh (I'm covered) The joint AEA/URPE session was very lively, but suffered from the last minute absence of Brad DeLong. He did send the notes of what he was going to discuss here. On the topic of stagnation per se only Hans Despin suggested that it was an important phenomenon, but not necessarily for the same reasons Larry Summers and Brad De Long. It was unclear to me, however, that his views were based on a demand side story, and, hence, that this...

Marginalist ReOrientation Slow posting for a while. Too many things happening that I didn't comment on, but I'll try to weigh in on the paper by Paul Romer on the trouble with macro. At any rate, the paper DisORIENT: Money, Technological Change and the Rise of the West has been published.