Tag Archives: Karl Marx

[embedded content]Automation Of Chinese Ports With automation, many processes for production and distribution now execute with minimal human oversight. How can the labor theory of value, as in volume 1 of Capital, be compatible with this? Marx has some comments on this subject in the Grundrisse: The exchange of living labour for objectified labour – i.e. the positing of social labour in the form of the contradiction of capital and wage labour – is the ultimate development of the...

"There is in every society or neighbourhood an ordinary or average rate, both of wages and profit, in every different employment of labour and stock... There is likewise in every society or neighbourhood an ordinary or average rate of rent... These ordinary or average rates may be called the natural rates of wages, profit and rent, at the time and place in which they commonly prevail. When the price of any commodity is neither more nor less than what is sufficient to pay the rent...

Infinite are the arguments of Marxists. This very selective survey needs references. A first difficult is that everybody knows Marx has something to do with the Soviet Union. Many come to reading Capital with certain preconceptions. A couple comments in the book, for analytical reasons, contrast capitalism and feudalism and a post-capitalist economy with common ownership. But the book is about capitalism. The book contains expressions of outrage, often ironical. But is capitalism...

1.0 Introduction This post outlines an unoriginal argument against Marx's version of the Labor Theory of Value (LTV), if that is the right name. Somehow, this post was obliquely inspired by Fabio Petri's recent working paper. Suppose technology, net output, and the real wage are given. Then the rate of profits and prices of production are determined. Suppose that the technology provides a choice of technique. Then the determination of the choice of technique requires an analysis at...

Marx, in Theories of Surplus Value, quotes James Stuart writing about 'profit upon alienation'. When one sells a good one owns, one has alienated it from oneself. In the typical work relation under capitalism, the managers of firms, that is, the representatives of capitalists, sell the product or services that workers produce. Workers do not own the goods they produce, for they have previously sold their labor-power. That is, they have agreed that their product is not owned by themselves,...

Every child knows a nation which ceased to work, I will not say for a year, but even for a few weeks, would perish. Every child knows, too, that the masses of products corresponding to the different needs required different and quantitatively determined masses of the total labor of society. That this necessity of the distribution of social labor in definite proportions cannot possibly be done away with by a particular form of social production but can only change the mode of its appearance...

I have previously repeated some transcriptions from the correspondence Marx and Engels. I tried to concentrate on some formulations from Engels of ideas important in Marxism, Marx stating what is important and novel in Capital, or outlines of the project, particularly concentrating on the so-called transformation problem. This long letter certainly belongs in this collection. Marx's ideas were fairly well-developed in 1858. Here he has promised Duncker, a publisher, to write what...

1.0 Introduction I have written many posts on formal results related to my favorite interpretations of the theory of value and distribution in Marx's Capital. But Marx's work is not solely about formalism. One aspect of volume 1 is a history of production processes up to Marx's day. Much opportunity exists to build on this history. Some have done this in works I have not read much of. I have been reading Soren Mau, and many years ago I read much of Charles Babbage's On the Economy of...

1.0 Introduction John Maynard Keynes had some amusing jibes against Marx, but does not provide any substantial argument against the theory in Marx's Capital. In fact, one can draw parallelisms between elements of Keynes' and Marx's theories. This post provides a brief start on justifications for these assertions. 2.0 Jibes Keynes' most explicit and most well-known statement about Marx is probably this: "How can I accept a doctrine which sets up as its bible, above and beyond criticism,...

This post is basically complaining that I cannot keep up. I think I am fairly informed on Karl Marx. I do not read German, and I have not even read some early works. My area of concentration is reading Capital as a work of mathematical economics, which cuts against the subtitle and, maybe, de-emphasizes a break with classical, especially, Ricardian political economy. More generally, I thought Marx generally praises the tremendous increase of productivity brought about by the...