Tag Archives: Marx

An interesting passage from Wilhelm Liebknecht’s book Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs (1901) about Marx’s predictions: “ … whoever prophesies revolutions is always mistaken in the date.Well, though Marx was a prophet looking into the future with sharp eyes and perceiving much more than ordinary human beings, he never was a prophesier, and when Messieurs Kinkel, Ledru Rollin and other revolution-makers announced in every appeal to their folks in partibus the typical, ‘To-morrow it will...

I've been teaching an Intermediate Political Economy course, substituting Berhanu Nega, who regularly teaches this course. The text used, and it was already in the bookstore, is Bowles, Edwards and Roosevelt's Understanding Capitalism, which puts an emphasis on individual behavior as the main difference with the marginalist view, and is not the best choice, in my view. At any rate here are a few old posts on Marx, which is central to the first part of the course (towards the end Veblen...

This can be seen in an article Engels wrote 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).Right at the beginning of this supplement, Engels notes that people such as Achille Loria had pointed to the devastating contradiction between volume 1 and volume 3 of Capital in the theory of value (Marx 1991: 1027–1028).Next, Engels mentions that Werner Sombart, in a review of Marx’s work...

There are two important passages here: “But, although the money that performs the functions of a measure of value is only ideal money, price depends entirely upon the actual substance that is money. The value, or in other words, the quantity of human labour contained in a ton of iron, is expressed in imagination by such a quantity of the money-commodity as contains the same amount of labour as the iron. According, therefore, as the measure of value is gold, silver, or copper, the value of...

Chapter 8 of volume 1 of Capital is called “Constant Capital and Variable Capital” (Marx 1990: 307), and it discusses non-labour factors (constant capital) and living labour (variable capital).Marx divides capital as factors of production into two categories: (1) constant capital, and(2) variable capital (Marx 1990: 317). Constant capital is the means of production used in the production process whose values are merely transferred to the output product (Marx 1990: 307; Harvey 2010: 128).How...

Chapter 7 of volume 1 of Capital is called “The Labour Process and the Valorization Process” (Marx 1990: 283), and it discusses the process of labour and surplus value.It is divided into two sections: (1) The Labour-Process or the Production of Use-Values.(2) The Production of Surplus-Value (also called “The Valorization Process” in Marx 1990: 293). A critical summary of these two sections follows.(1) The Labour-Process or the Production of Use-Values Capitalists buy labour-power from...

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...

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...

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...