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Tag Archives: capitalism

Big Think and the nature of capitalism

Jack Goody was one of those rare thinkers that tried to think big. Not common in economics anymore, and less clear in other social sciences, as somewhat narrowly defined techniques take over the breadth of historical understanding. I've only read before his The Theft of History, somewhat iconoclastic book in which he debunks the idea that individualism, democracy and freedom were somehow invented by modern Western society.I started reading now his Metals, Culture and Capitalism. There are...

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Marx on the Increasing Intensity of Labour in Industrial Capitalism: I Refute Him Thus

In the videos below.But first let us look at Marx’s theory. It is that capitalists aim at increasing their theft of surplus value from workers.They can do this in three ways: (1) by increasing the length of the working day while holding down the real wage to a subsistence level (that is, increasing absolute surplus value);(2) decreasing the price of the basic commodities making up the value of the maintenance and reproduction of labour by automation, and thus reducing the real subsistence...

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Paul Bairoch on the Industrial Revolution, Imperialism and Capitalism

The economic historian Paul Bairoch (1930–1999) subjected some Marxist myths about Western capitalism and imperialism to critical scrutiny in his now classic book Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes (New York and London, 1993).First, was the Western industrial revolution dependent on energy from the Third World?Bairoch (1993: 59) notes that right up until the post-WWII era the West was almost completely self-sufficient in energy, and as late as the 1930s much of the developed...

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The Long-Run Tendency of Capitalism is to Decrease the Rate of Exploitation

This follows quite clearly from (1) the logic of Marx’s own theory in volume 1 of Capital and (2) the empirical history of capitalism.Let us run through the steps: (1) Let us assume that the concept of abstract socially necessary labour time is valid (even though the concept is incoherent, cannot be properly defined and is empirically irrelevant). But, as I note, let’s assume – for the sake of argument – that it is coherent and empirically relevant.(2) For Marx, the total working day is...

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Would Capitalism necessarily be destroyed if Human Labour fell towards Zero?

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...

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More on Engels’ Supplement to Volume 3 of Capital

It was in the spring of 1895 that Engels wrote his supplement to volume 3 of Capital (Howard and King 1989: 48), a small essay which clarifies how Engels understood Marx’s law of value at the end of Engels’ life (Engels died on August 5, 1895).This was written in May 1895 for the Neue Zeit (Marx 1991: 1027, n.), which is available as the “Supplement and Addendum” to Volume 3 of Capital in Marx (1991: 1027–1047).This supplement was partly inspired by the critical reviews of volume 3 of Capital...

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The Failed End of Capitalism Prediction by Marx

This is made at the end of volume 1 of Capital in the “Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation” chapter: “ As soon as this process of [sc. capitalist] transformation has sufficiently decomposed the old society from, top to bottom, as soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their means of labour into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own feet, then the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the land and other means of...

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Comparative Advantage and Capitalism

[embedded content] From CAPITALISM the documentary by Ilan Ziv. In this short clip a discussion of comparative advantage and its limitations, with Pascal Lamy, Robert Boyer and yours truly (many others in this chapter, including Geoff Hodgson and Ha-Joon Chang).The Mexican secretary of finance that appears in the video is actually NOT talking about the Ricardian model of trade, which at least given its assumptions is logically correct, but about the neoclassical or Heckscher-Ohlin-Samuelson...

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Marx on Mass Immigration and Capitalism

Just for all you Marxists out there.Here are Marx’s comments on mass immigration into Britain in the 19th century in a letter to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt in 1870: “But the English bourgeoisie has also much more important interests in the present economy of Ireland. Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labour market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English...

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Bowles on Capitalism and Institutions

As I noted before I've been teaching a Political Economy course, which I assumed right before classes began, and, I decided to keep the textbook, since it was already ordered. The book is written by Bowles, Edwards, and in the last edition, Roosevelt and is titled Understanding Capitalism. I discussed before the meaning of capitalism here (see also this on the use of the term capitalism as a proxy for free market policies).Here just a brief comment on the use of the idea of modes of...

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