Transfer of Labour Time on the World Market: Religious Sanctions and Economic Results

Jørgen Sandemose

doi:10.3390/rel3030739

Abstract

This paper investigates the extent to which a term like “globalization”, especially in its sense of implying the existence of a system, or of dominant features favouring development towards some system, is adaptable to a theory of a world economy which is to take due notice of the structure of the exchange value of commodities on the world market. A leading idea is that religious outlooks, in the way they were conceptualized by Karl Marx, have a strong bearing upon the difference in labour intensities in countries contributing to the world market, and thereby upon the differences in international values and prices. These differences are expressed in a scale-based, rigid structure on the world market itself—a structure which gives us the fundamental reason why certain specific countries or areas may get steadily poorer in relative terms, while others may constantly get relatively richer through the same mechanism. Consequently, when (as it is done here) religion is taken to express the quintessence of the cultural level of societies, it can be said that the comparative study of religions gives us a key to the understanding of crucial economic differences between nations. The differences in question are primarily those prevailing between capitalist societies on the one hand, and non-capitalist, or what is here called patrimonial societies, on the other.

Highlights

This paper investigates the extent to which a term like ―globalization‖, especially in its sense of implying the existence of a system, or of dominant features favouring development towards some system, is adaptable to a theory of a world economy which is to take due notice of the structure of the exchange value of commodities on the world market
I concentrate on the relation between labour intensities and different religions, focusing on the property structures especially in traditional capitalism in north-western Europe and northern America
The last section is a summing-up of political possibilities and of the function of religions in the world economy

Summary

Introductory Remarks: A Main Overview

I will assume that the reader is to some extent acquainted with basic notions of Marxian economic theory, and I will try to explicate such notions more in depth as they appear in the course of the reasoning. The first section below focuses on the Marxian labour theory of value, especially in its modification on the world market. This means that the concept ofuniversal labour‘ is drawn into the centre of analysis. I concentrate on the relation between labour intensities and different religions, focusing on the property structures especially in traditional capitalism in north-western Europe and northern America.. The last section is a summing-up of political possibilities and of the function of religions in the world economy. It points to the contemporary turmoil of western capitalism as a traditional crisis of overproduction. It argues that a probable development lies in a revenge for western capital, and a breakdown of extant patrimonial forms of capitalist enterprise

Conceptual Fundamentals of a Labour Theory of Value

The World Market: A regime of Labour Transfer and of Uneven Development

The Russo-Soviet Exemplar

Definition of a One-Sided Process

Findings

Concluding Remarks