CAPITAL AND FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING: A COMMENTARY ON BRYER'S “A MARXIST CRITIQUE OF THE FASB'S CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK”1

Bryer (1999) reiterates criticisms of the “balance-sheet” approach underlying the FASB's conceptual framework as failing either to explain or guide the development of financial accounting practice, and aims to demonstrate how operational and objective principles of financial accounting can be derived from Marx's labour theory of “surplus-value”. However, the potentially conflicting objectives of “Marxist” accountings remain unresolved, and Bryer's attempted derivation of accounting rules for individual business enterprises appears to misunderstand the rationale of Marx's detailed examination of the circuits of capital in Parts One and Two of Volume II of @9pCapital@2p and to offer no critical foundation for Praxis. It is argued here that the focus of a critical Marxist accounting would more appropriately shift to recognising the extraction of surplus-value from labour and its addition to the value of inventory during the process of production (rather than reporting profit as the result of sale). However, the practical application of such a principle would still require the use of convention-based allocations at least as arbitrary as those of conventional financial accounting and, more fundamentally, such a change of accounting principle could not in itself be sufficient to “force the secret of profit making” under the capitalist mode of production. The accounting would still be consistent with both Marxist and neoclassical economic theories of the nature of capitalism. Bryer's approach to deriving Marxist accounting rules cannot help us to understand the problematic nature of the power of modern financial accounting.     

“GETTING BY” AND “GETTING ON” IN SERVICE WORK: LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE OF ACCOUNTING?

The use of educated labour which can multi-task, make decisions and act responsibly facilitates the real subsumption of labour. By presenting data from an ethnographic study of students working in unskilled service jobs in the UK, we show that such workers are not subsumed totally but exhibit a resistant medium by extending their own frontiers of control and developing self-help policies. As many accounting students will have worked in the kinds of jobs reflected in our study, these experiences have important implications for the future of accounting in the USA and elsewhere where work within and outside the profession has been deskilled and educated labour is increasingly used to undertake lower skilled work     

THE LOGIC OF EARNED ECONOMIC INCOME—A REPLY

Skinner (1998) challenged the papers that had presented the theory of Earned Economic Income (EEI) and had developed it in an attempt to show how it could be applied in practice. He asserted that they were illogical, inconsistent and based on a flawed chain of reasoning. This paper contends that Skinner's arguments were probably based on confusion. Such confusion could be attributable to a misinterpretation of adequate exposition by the proponents of EEI, because of Skinner's apparent fixation on a valuation-based concept of income measurement. Alternatively, it could be an indication of inadequacies in such exposition. Due to the possibility of the latter, this response seeks very briefly to clarify some of the concepts that Skinner disputes, indicating the reasons for dismissing his contentions. It is possible that Skinner dislikes EEI because it is inconsistent with a model for which he has a prior preference, but that would not be an appropriate basis for dismissing reasoned argument.     

CRITICAL COMMENTARYCHANGED RULES THEORY AND THE EVOLUTION OF ACCOUNTANCY — A COMMENT

In a recent article Birkin @9pet al. @2p(1997) proposed that Changed Rules Theory should provide the appropriate inner logic to drive accounting, in lieu of Social Darwinism. In this comment I take issue with the dichotomy between Darwinism and Changed Rules Theory. I show that both of Changed Rules Theory and Darwinism, when correctly presented, lead to the perspectives the authors recommend.     

CRITICAL COMMENTARY: A RESPONSE TO COMMENTS MADE REGARDING “CHANGED RULES THEORY AND THE EVOLUTION OF ACCOUNTANCY”

Birkin @9pet al@2p. (1997) applied new arguments about the evolution of life on this planet to the evolution of accountancy and derived prospects from these new arguments. The arguments were based on discoveries made in the Burgess Shale as reported and explicated by Gould (1991). In particular, the Birkin @9pet al@2p. (1997) paper indicated that the use made of Social Darwinism within accountancy was incorrect according to these new arguments about evolution. The comments made regarding this paper claimed that Social Darwinism and the new arguments about evolution were not incompatible, that several errors of attribution were made and that the Birkin @9pet al@2p. (1997) paper failed to show that Darwin's theory of natural selection was incorrect. This response reveals how those comments were based on a misreading of the Birkin @9pet al@2p. (1997) paper and a misinterpretation of the fossil evidence of the Burgess Shale.