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Tag Archives: Karl Marx

Peter Taaff — Parasitic capitalism exposed [Book Review]

Mariana Mazzucato’s new book is a detailed exposé of the parasitic character of modern capitalism, drawing on Karl Marx’s theory of the source of value creation. But understanding the law of value is only a first step to providing an alternative to a system that cannot overcome its inevitable tendency for periodic crises and which needs to be overthrown, argues Peter Taaffe. Socialism TodayParasitic capitalism exposed Peter Taaff | general secretary of the Socialist Party of England and...

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Robert Vienneau — Theses For Debate In Reading Marx

I present four claims about Marx's Capital. I strive for topics more general than, for example, squabbles about the transformation problem. I suggest that some of these claims present a useful focus for reading Marx's book, even if part of your focus is arguing why the claim is wrong. If this were more than a blog post, I would need to cite various Marxists and scholars that inspired me. Short. Not wonkish. Worth thinking about, e.g, relative to "normalizing Marx." Implies Marx was a...

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Theses For Debate In Reading Marx

I present four claims about Marx's Capital. I strive for topics more general than, for example, squabbles about the transformation problem. I suggest that some of these claims present a useful focus for reading Marx's book, even if part of your focus is arguing why the claim is wrong. If this were more than a blog post, I would need to cite various Marxists and scholars that inspired me. Thesis I: Capital is organized around a model of a pure, two-class capitalist economy. I think the...

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Matias Vernengo — Economic and technological determinism

If you are interested in Marx.Speaking as a philosopher commenting on Marx as a philosopher more than he was an economist, I think that Matias Vernengo gets is about right. He is in agreement with John Kenneth Galbraith on it.Marx was a materialist ontologically. He had written his doctoral dissertation on Greek materialism.  He looked forward to occupying a chair in philosophy at a university as a career. His political activism obviated this, and he was forced to go into exile to more...

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Sam Williams — Modern Money (Pt 3)

In this post, I will contrast the analysis of foreign trade found in Professor L. Randall Wray’s book “Modern Money Theory” and contrast it to the analysis of foreign trade that logically emerges from Marx’s theory of commodities, money and capital.... A Critique of Crisis TheoryModern Money (Pt 3) Sam Williams

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A Semi-Idyllic Golden Age

1.0 Introduction This post presents a model of a steady state with a constant rate of growth in which: Total wages and total profits grow at same rate. Neutral technical change increases the productivity of labor in all industries. The wage per hour increases with productivity. Each worker continues to consume the same quantity of produced commodities. But each worker takes advantage of increased productivity to work less hours per year. In these times, when concerns about global warning...

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Chris Dillow — Socialism in one country

The takeaway: The appropriate modes of economic organization vary from country to country. In saying this, I’m following Edmund Burke, who wrote: Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind. The answer might lie in a distinction made by Burke as described (pdf) by Jesse [Norman]....

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Frank Li — Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx

Frank Li is a Chinese ex-pat that settled in America after receiving a PhD in the US. He is an electrical engineer and entrepreneur.His take is informed from both the Chinese and American (Western) points of view and he offers a reasonably objective analysis in comparison to the largely one-sided and ill-informed one that one generally encounters in the West. His work covers the social, political and economic spectrum but this one focuses on economics. The dramatic rise of China over the...

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Sandwichman — The Wage[s]-Lump Doctrine — still dogma after all these years

The lump-of-labor fallacy CLAIM is the wage-fund doctrine in disguise. The fallacy claim's conclusions about the ultimate futility of workers' demands are indistinguishable from the doctrine's conclusions. Only the premise from which those conclusions are deduced has been altered. Instead of asserting a certain quantity of work to be done, the fallacy claim attributes that fixed assumption to a designated scapegoat: workers, unions, populists. The claimants' own assumptions are left...

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David F. Ruccio — Marx ratio

First there was the Great Gatsby curve. Then there was the Proust index. Now, thanks to Neil Irwin, we have the Marx ratio. Each, in their different way, attempts to capture the ravages of contemporary capitalism. But the Marx ratio is a bit different. It was published in the New York Times. Its aim is to capture one of the underlying determinants of the obscene levels of inequality in the United States today—not class mobility or the number of years of national income growth lost to the...

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