Surplus Value Production and Realization in Marxian Theory – Applications to the U.S., 1990–2015

ABSTRACT

Marx's Capital shows that surplus value can be produced in one industry, yet realized as profit (and possibly revenue) by other industries over the course of circulation. This paper highlights the separation between surplus value production and realization in Marx's work, and develops a new method for estimating surplus value production at the industry level to trace out transfers of surplus value across industries. The framework is based on the ‘New Interpretation’ and links money value added to surplus value production at the industry level. Data on value added by industry for the U.S. are used to estimate surplus value production by industry. The analysis allows comparison of surplus value production and realization in each industry. The pattern of differentials between surplus value creation and realization across industries sheds light on the processes of capitalist competition and points to a source of instability for capitalist economies.     

MARX@200

ABSTRACT

The article begins by outlining the philosophic anthropology that Marx derived from his reading of Hegel. We continue by arguing that this formed the basis of his materialist conception of history and his analysis of the political economy of the capitalist mode of production, with particular reference being made to Marx’s theory of value and his account of the economic contradictions of the capitalist system. We then discuss his views on the nature of post-capitalist society, concluding with a critical but broadly positive account of the relevance of his ideas to modern capitalism. Marx, we suggest, should not be regarded as a purely 19th-century thinker, as some recent biographers have maintained.     

Sraffa’s Constructive and Interpretive Work,and Marx

ABSTRACT

This article provides a summary account of Piero Sraffa’s constructive and interpretive work on the classical approach to the theory of value and distribution and its relationship with Marx’s contributions. It is shown that in the early phase of his constructive work Sraffa developed his equation systems by adopting a ‘physical real cost’ approach and a strictly objectivist point of view, and completely eschewed Marx’s labour-based approach and the related Marxian concepts. Only at a later stage did he explore systematically the relationship between his own modern re-formulation of the surplus approach to the theory of value and distribution and Marx’s contribution. He considered Marx’s most important analytical contribution to the further development of the surplus approach to consist of the re-integration of circular production relations, which allowed him to see the existence of a maximum rate of profits and its role in an analysis of accumulation and technical change.     

The employment contract with externalised costs: the avatars of Marxian exploitation

Abstract

The paper pursues two aims. The first is to argue that the foundation of Marx’s theory of capitalist exploitation is to be found, not in the labour theory of value, but rather in the contract of employment, the legal frame of the capital-labour relation. The second is to suggest that the partial externalisation of the reproduction cost of labour power has been an important source of relative surplus value, along with the productivity increase, emphasised by Marx, in the industries supplying wage goods.     

Refugees as Surplus Population: Race,Migration and Capitalist Value Regimes

ABSTRACT

Refugees and migrants are often studied as though they have no relation to the racial and class structures of the societies in which they reside. They are strangers to be governed by ‘integration’ policy and border management. Refugees and migrants are, however, subjects of contemporary capitalism struggling to render themselves valuable capitalist modes of production. I study the government of refugees and migrants in order to examine capitalist value regimes. Societal values and hierarchies reflected in capitalist modes of production impact on struggles of racialised subaltern groups to translate body power into valued labour. Marx’s account of surplus populations points to the common marginalisations of people called ‘refugees’ and other subaltern groups struggling to translate their body power into valorised labour. The essay includes a study of the gentrification of a district in Budapest, and its transformation into a means for the reproduction of capital, leading to the marginalisation of groups who no longer fit the new value regimes. Studying refugees as surplus populations allows for a sense of the common marginalisations of subaltern and racialised groups before capitalism, and questions the treatment of refugees and migrants as ‘strangers’.     

Value and Exploitation: A counterfactual approach

A deconstruction of the Marxian theories of value and exploitation is attempted by arguing, first, that the labour theory of value is logically and methodologically inconsistent as a basis for a theory of capitalist exploitation and, second, that it is founded on an ontology of the social being which is not plausibly justified. A counterfactual model economy is then built, called Utopia, in which the workers receive the whole net output while commodities exchange at labour values. This model is used as a benchmark to evaluate a capitalist economy where commodities exchange at production prices and workers are exploited. It is shown that the factor of exploitation can be expressed as a ratio between the labour commanded by, and the labour contained in, the net output, or between the value added produced in a capitalist economy and that produced in Utopia. The resulting theory of exploitation entails a weak ontology of the social being, expressing a worker's point of view.     

Error or absurdity? A non-cognitive approach to commodity fetishism

Abstract

Karl Marx presented his theory of commodity fetishism as an explanation of the mysterious appearance of social relations in a system of commodity production as natural phenomena. The standard interpretation of this as a failure to perceive capitalist social relations correctly depends on a particular modern sense of ‘natural’. If classical political economy and Marx used ‘natural’ in the Aristotelian sense, commodity fetishism appears quite differently: not as a cognitive error but rather as a manner of living under commodity production, one that is not wrong but absurd, the word fetishism tying commodity production to pre-Enlightenment, preliterate peoples.     

马克思剩余价值理论视角下信息商品增值研究

信息劳动创造价值,如何在马克思剩余价值理论视角下研究信息商品增值是一个新的研究课题。信息劳动是复杂劳动,创建期投入巨大,一些信息商品具有独特形式。将信息生产的不同时期的区分引入复杂的劳动过程和价值增殖的研究：信息商品创建期和扩大生产期都属于生产过程,在生产中获得价值增殖的潜力,而通过流通过程,创造出巨大数量的消费受众,从而实现了剩余价值的获得。巨大的规模投资、极高的技术门槛和政府政策保护使信息企业获得超额剩余价值。     

The physiocrats' concept of labour: A difficulty in Marx's interpretation

Abstract

This article explains the difference between the concept of labour developed by the Physiocrats and Marx. We show that Marx's interpretation based on Turgot is questionable. Whereas Marx bases his ideas on a Lockian definition of labour which puts labour at the origin of value, Quesnay and his disciples develop a mechanistic definition of labour established on Neo-Cartesian foundations. This particular concept of labour then combines with a bio-physical definition of production. The theory of the net product is therefore re-interpreted.     

On Marx's Analysis of Money Hoarding in the Turnover of Capital

The formation of money hoards, which underpins the demand for money, is typically treated by mainstream monetary theory as originating in the motives of the rational individual. In contrast, Marx's discussion of money hoarding treats hoard formation as a necessary tendency of capitalist production and circulation rather than as a result of the individual's predilections. Based on Marx's analysis, this article identifies several structural reasons for money hoard formation in the circuit of capital. It is also shown that Marx's discussion, despite its insight, suffers from a technical error in analysing the overlapping of production and circulation time in the circuit, and in drawing the implications for hoarding. Finally, it is argued that the broader significance of capitalist money hoarding lies in the foundations it provides for the emergence of the credit system.     

Keynes‐Marx and Keynes‐Wicksell Models of Monetary Growth: A framework for future analysis

This paper reconsiders and generalizes a dichotomizing two-sector real growth model of Marglin which claims that the steady state of capitalist economies is plagued by secular inflation. We show that this implication need not be true from the perspective of a more general steady state analysis and that the Marglin model can be embedded into a general Keynes‐Marx‐Friedman or Keynes‐Wicksell framework where money is superneutral, where therefore inflation is due solely to excessive monetary growth, where the private sector is basically asymptotically stable and where there is a steady state rate of employment that differs from the 'natural' rate of employment of monetarist models of inflation. We consider this model a benchmark model that requires equally general alternatives if the above implications are to be rejected.     

Marx,Finance and Political Economy

ABSTRACT

Shortly after the publication of Volume I of Capital, the financial requirements of capitalist enterprise forced the financial innovation of bond and stock finance for joint stock companies. Marx intended to re-write Capital in order to incorporate this change. He did not achieve this. The economic analysis of capitalism with long-term finance was undertaken by Hilferding in his Finance Capital. Thereafter, a strand of economic analysis of production and distribution emerged in the work of the Austro-Marxists, Veblen, Keynes, Kalecki, Steindl and Sweezy, and the Italian Kaleckians, Joseph Halevi and Riccardo Bellofiore, which incorporated the change made to the structure and dynamics of capitalism by long-term finance. However, this shift in capitalist financing has largely been ignored in economic theory, while much of the heterodox analysis that seeks to challenge the role of finance in contemporary capitalism has not integrated finance consistently. The change from the classic capitalism to finance capital raises important questions about the meaning and relevance of Marx’s work today.     

Say’s Law,Marxian Crisis Theory and the Interconnectedness of the Capitalist Economy

ABSTRACT

Scholars have long debated exactly why Marx felt that general gluts were not just possible, but inevitable. This article argues that Theories of Surplus Value anchored that necessity in the complex interconnectedness that characterizes capitalist production. There, Marx’s criticism of Say’s Law builds on a version of crisis theory that begins with raw material shortages in a leading sector. The disturbance is then transmitted through the many inter-industry linkages in the capitalist economy. What starts as a supply-side shock in a leading sector is transformed into a broad crisis of aggregate demand as workers are laid off and businesses fall into insolvency. This article argues that Marx’s later discussion of other types of crises in Capital can be read as consistent with this approach. A severe profit squeeze in a leading sector (whether originating in intermediate good prices, market demand, rising wages or rising use of fixed capital) necessarily turns into a general glut. In this context, Say’s Law becomes an irrelevant theorem concerning an imaginary economy. What Marx sees as fundamentally new under capitalism is not the use of money and the separation of sale and purchase, but massive interconnectedness.     

Marx,Sraffa, and Surplus: Observations Prompted by Garegnani (2018)

ABSTRACT

In a posthumously published article, Pierangelo Garegnani (2018. ‘On the Labour Theory of Value in Marx and in the Marxist Tradition.’) depicts Marx’s project in Capital as that of ‘developing systematically the theory of Ricardo and [the] implications of social conflict’ implied by Ricardo’s ‘surplus approach to value and distribution’. This paper argues to the contrary that Marx’s theory of surplus value and exploitation differs from (neo-)Ricardian surplus theory in fundamental ways, and modifies Garegnani’s simple Sraffian model to illustrate the distinctive implications of Marx’s theory.     

Class Struggle or Embedded Markets? Marx,Polanyi and the Meanings and Possibilities of Social Transformation

Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and to inform ways to overcome them. This paper discusses Polanyi's work from a Marxist perspective in order to illuminate his strengths and weaknesses. Its main focus is to discuss Polanyi's juxtaposing of commodification against exploitation, in diagnosing the problems of capitalist expansion. We suggest that by juxtaposing these two moments, Polanyi not only misses out on a crucial arena of capitalist activity (exploitation), but also undermines his own explication of processes of commodification. This has deleterious consequences for his understanding of the prevalence of poverty under capitalism. It also means that his vision of social transformation and of socialism is profoundly different, and potentially antithetical, to that of Marx. We suggest that for Polanyi's conception of de-commodification to gain greater traction it needs to be combined with Marx's analysis of exploitation and class struggle.     

Shadow Money in the 19th Century: Is Marx Relevant for Understanding Contemporary Shadow Money?

ABSTRACT

The growth of shadow money, since the 1980s, has implications for both central bank policy and the theorization of money. However, modern shadow money has a historical analogue in the private bill market of 19th century England This article explores the relevance of Marx’s logical and historical analysis of the evolution of the forms and functions of money in capitalist economies, and his concrete analysis of the bill market in order to understand shadow money today.     

非物质劳动条件下马克思的劳动价值论过时了吗——评哈特和奈格里基于“共同性”的价值理论

哈特和奈格里根据当代资本主义劳动范式的转型提出了非物质劳动概念,并认为在非物质劳动条件下马克思的劳动价值论需要做出修正,进而提出了基于"共同性"的价值理论。本文通过批判性地分析他们的观点,得出以下结论:(1)以"工作时间与生活时间的模糊"来质疑马克思的劳动价值论是对劳动价值论的误读,马克思的"社会必要劳动时间计量商品价值量"是抽象意义的"计量",是对本质的规定,而非具体意义的"计量",它由商品生产与交换的社会过程客观决定,不能以具体意义的"劳动时间难以测量"来否定价值的质的规定;(2)基于"共同性"的价值理论服务于哈特和奈格里主体政治的理论建构思路,他们对价值的解读具有很强的主体性特征,这种价值与其说是商品价值,不如说是政治价值;(3)哈特和奈格里的理论建构方法,早已脱离了辩证唯物主义和历史唯物主义,走向唯心主义。因此,当代资本主义的政治经济学批判仍应建立在马克思劳动价值论的基础之上。     

Is Marx's absolute rent due to a monopoly price?

ABSTRACT

Absolute rent, in Marx's view, has an upper limit represented by the difference between the value and the price of production of agricultural commodities. The relevance of this limit was questioned by Bortkiewicz because of the difficulties concerning the argument which Marx based it on. The lack of this upper limit prompted some scholars to claim that there is no difference between absolute rent and a rent paid by a monopoly price. Referring to the classical/Marxian theory of monopoly price, we shall argue that it is still possible to distinguish absolute rent from a rent due to a monopoly price.     

Marx and Ricardo on machinery: a critical note

This article critically discusses the important and relevant—not to mention controversial— views of Ricardo and Marx on the impact of machinery on labor productivity, the organization of production and the wages and employment prospects of the working class during the capitalism of their day. First, the article turns to Ricardo’s assessment of the introduction of machinery and its likely effects on the laborer and the rate of profit and accumulation—one which went through a substantial revision (and reversal) between the first and third editions of his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. Then, we discuss Marx’s own critical analysis of the historical development of machinery and its impact on the labor process, the so-called “compensation principle,” and how the rising organic composition of capital ostensibly generates a “redundant or surplus-population” during the course of capitalist development. We highlight Marx’s intellectual debt to Ricardo, John Barton (and George Ramsay) insofar as his theory of technological unemployment is concerned. Lastly, the article summarizes the views of Ricardo and Marx and offers some concluding remarks.     

The Economic Surplus as a Fund for Social Change and Postneoliberal Governance

The central problem in capitalism today is not one of scarce resources clashing against innate, insatiable wants. Rather, the modern problem of monopoly capitalism is one of abundance of production clashing against scarcity of consumers. Indeed, sustaining growth while fighting against excess capacity proves to be the biggest battle in business today, fought by the capitalist power structure with the tools of neoliberalism and globalization. The economic surplus, roughly sketched, represents that gap between productive resources and consumption, and thus represents the abundance that is possible given current technology. The argument set forth is that the economic surplus remains a powerful tool in describing economic relationships and social justice issues within the context of the Great Capitalist Restoration, but more importantly, that the economic surplus represents a tool for social change. The potential for socially just amelioration and change within post-neoliberal governance is explored with explicit reference to the qualitative and instrumental framework proposed by Ron Stanfield in his somewhat overlooked but incredibly important piece, “The Fund for Social Change” (1992).