Appropriation Of Surplus Value Research Articles

Empirical evaluation of the law of value

The law of value is empirically evaluated as it relates to the distribution of capital across industries and their appropriation of surplus value, using US economic census manufacturing data from 1997 through 2017. Strong correlation is demonstrated between the annual surplus value appropriated and mass of capital stock, with thecoefficient of determination values ranging 0.75–0.85. Correlation between the product of the effective rate of surplus value and theannual number of turnovers of variable capital versus the organic composition of capital plus one yields coefficient of determination values ranging 0.50–0.61. Factors underlying this correlation are evaluated. Taking market concentration into account only marginally improves the coefficient of determination values. To model results, a theoretical framework is presented in which surplus value is partially retained and partially redistributed across industries. Lastly, the term ‘concrete composition of capital’ is introduced to denote the ratio of fixed capital to circulating capital, as a counterpart to the organic composition of capital. This ratio increases over time indicating technological progress under capitalism is mobilized to decrease unit production costs, expand the scale of production, and reduce the turnover period of circulating capital as fundamental means of competition.

Capital concentration in and through class differentiation: A case study from Pampean agribusiness

AbstractThe National Agricultural Census (NAC) held in Argentina in 2018 shows that the concentration and centralization of agrarian capital in this country's heartland of grain and oilseed production is an ongoing process. An extensive academic literature has attributed this trend to the dynamics of capitalist development in agriculture in general and to Argentina's political economy in particular. Tying into these discussions and based on a case study, this paper argues that an analysis of how the growth of large corporations works in and through class differentiation helps to further explain the dynamics of concentration and centralization. This includes (i) examining the strategies of big companies to diversify capital functions across various value chain links and (ii) elucidating how they have established particular relations to smaller capitals, intermediate classes, and workers, as well as the related patterns of exploitation and appropriation of surplus value.

Värdet av ett klassbegrepp

[The value of a class concept] During the heydays of class analysis in 1970–1985, all class concepts were rooted in Marx’s value theory. Gradually, however, different interpretations of the value theory resulted in the emergence of two main tracks in the development of the class concept. Those who represented the interpretation called the labour theory of value gradually abandoned value theory and developed a class concept focusing on what people have, not on what they do. That has become the dominant definition of class. In his article Mikael Stigendal, in contrast, wants to highlight the use-value of a class concept drawing on the second main track, that which adheres to Marx’s value theory but from a different interpretation. Only such a class concept can meet the great need for a class analysis that not only categorizes people but thereby also says something about society’s economic driving forces, what people can be expected to do and what this can be expected to do to them, based on a focus on what they do, particularly in relation to the production and appropriation of surplus value. Publication history: Published original. (Published 20 May 2021) Citation: Stigendal, Mikael (2021) “Vardet av ett klassbegrepp”, in Arkiv. Tidskrift for samhallsanalys , issue 13, pp. 11–50. https://doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.13.1

Women and children together and apart

AbstractIn what ways, and to what effects, are proliferating temporalities of appropriation in financialized capitalism transforming or transformed by those of social reproductive labor? More specifically, how are woman-child relations affected when social reproduction becomes a site of immediate, not just indirect, capital accumulation through relations of debt? To answer these questions, we take up species-being as the laborrelationthat anchors socially necessary labor and links women and children by attending to three temporal modalities of accumulation via social reproductive labor: scholarization, (re)familization, and debt servicing. We argue that differentiated tempos in the appropriation of surplus value, operating to “fix” contradictions between capital's short- and long-term interests, are critical sources of tension between women and children in the meeting of needs. Producing and mapping divergent rhythms of appropriation on to different groups may both link diverse women and children, and put their interests at odds.

Social conflict and agrarian change inUganda's countryside

AbstractIn this paper, I explore the significance of Giovanni Arrighi's scholarship about the dynamics of capitalist accumulation and transformation in Africa and other “hostile” environments for critical agrarian studies. Specifically, I examine the relevance of his work for the analysis of multiple trajectories of agrarian change and social conflict in Uganda's countryside. By adopting synchronic and diachronic perspectives, the analysis here unveils the geographically uneven nature of transformation in the agrarian social structure in two distinct regions in Uganda: Buganda and Acholi. This complementarity allows us to grasp continuities and discontinuities in the processes of agrarian change and in the social struggles over the production and appropriation of surplus value in the longue durée. I argue that the agrarian social structure and the associated dynamics and forms of social conflict in the two regions massively diverged during the colonial period, while partially converging in the current era of neoliberal restructuring.

How capital operates and where the world and China are going: a conversation between David Harvey and Paik Nak-chung

ABSTRACTThe conversation first takes up the theme of David Harvey’s public lecture in Seoul, “Realization Crises and the Transformation of Everyday Life.” Harvey stresses that the relative neglect of Volume 2 of Marx’s Capital has prevented scholars and activists from paying due attention to the crucial importance of value realization for the reproduction of capital. The discussion then moves on to the city as both a site of production and of liberation struggles, a topic so far largely neglected in the Marxist tradition. Regarding the neoliberal phase of capitalism, Harvey calls it a “new imperialism” characterized by “accumulation by dispossession” as its guiding principle. Paik agrees to that distinguishing feature as compared with the immediately preceding phase where creation and appropriation of surplus value were more prominent, but suggests that “accumulation by dispossession” may have been an essential attribute of capitalism from the sixteenth century on. After ranging over a variety of topics, the conversation looks at the latest developments in the Chinese economy, how they may illustrate Harvey’s notion of capital’s “spatial fix,” and what other potentialities may yet be found in China’s diverse and complex reality.

Integrating Indigenous values with capitalism through tourism: Alaskan experiences and outstanding issues

ABSTRACT Radical theories from political economy assert that capitalism is founded on the creation and appropriation of surplus value through exploiting human labor and nature. Such exploitative social and social–ecological relations are generally understood as contradictory to Indigenous worldviews, which tend to emphasize community well-being and environmental reciprocity over maximizing private accumulation. Enter tourism, tantalizing in its promise as a “silver bullet” for Indigenous sustainable development. When done “right”, tourism can generate capitalist economic activity without drastically damaging cultural and ecological systems. This study examines spaces of confluence and divergence in Barrow, Alaska, between current tourism and the values of its Indigenous people, the Iñupiat. It considers the scenario of increased tourism in the future and identifies local visions for expanding tourism in a culturally appropriate manner. Key ideas for future development include increasing regulation of cruise ship tourists and enhancing capacity to host high-end tourists. The study reveals conflicting views about using subsistence hunting, fishing and whaling activities as tourism attractions, and concludes that the ability of leaders in Barrow to support Indigenous values through tourism highlights an opportunity and need for a research agenda focused on exploring the relationship between capitalism and its alternatives within tourism destinations.

The Political Economy of Postcrisis Global Capitalism

While the depression of the 1890s and the stagflation of the 1970s appear to be manifestations of Karl Marx's contention that the rate of profit tends to fall over time, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Great Recession of the 2000s appear to be rooted in rising rates of exploitation. Mainstream macroeconomics represents the watershed changes in world capitalism in the 1970s as due to technical improvements in economic theory and policy, thereby obscuring the underlying political economy of those changes. Globalized financial capitalism eliminated upward wage pressures and created an enormous engine for the appropriation of surplus value, which has led to a chronic stagnation of aggregate demand and unsustainable stress on the world financial system. The lack of a coherent solution to the problem of aggregate demand at the world level threatens to exacerbate conflicts among the capitalist nations and challenges US hegemony.

History and Human Emancipation: Struggle, Uncertainty and Openness

The critique of class society finds the positive only in the classless society, in communism. The difficulty of conceiving of human emancipation has to do with the very idea of communism. In distinction to the pursuit of profit, seizure of the state, pursuit and preservation of political power, and economic value and human resource, it follows a completely different entelechy of human development. Communism means Commune, an association of the direct producers where each contributes according to her abilities, and where each receives according to her needs. In distinction to the second and third Internationals, which subscribed to naturalised conceptions of society and history, there is no universal historical law that leads human kind from some imagined historical beginning via capitalism to communism. If, however, history is not the consequence of either divine revelation or abstract historical laws, what is it? History does not make history. Neither is history on the side of the working class. History takes no sides: it can as easily be the history of barbarism as of socialism. History is made, and will be made. The future that will come will not result from some objective laws of historical development but will result from the struggles of today. The communist future is a future present. Its reality is the everyday struggle over the production and appropriation of surplus value.

Economic restructuring in New Zealand: A classical account

Abstract New Zealand's recent experiment with radical neoliberalism is well rehearsed in international policy circles. Yet, given the economic restructuring premise for the reforms, there has been little assessment of their structural impact. In this paper I take up this challenge, utilising [Shaikh, A., Tonak, E. Measuring the wealth of nations: the political economy of national accounts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1994] methodology for deriving classical value categories from official national accounts data but extending this to the industry level. This approach allows changes to the production and appropriation of surplus value in different industries during the period to be identified, underpinning a Marxian interpretation of restructuring. Beyond the methodology, the research makes four contributions. First, conventional analysis is found limited by its concentration on changes to the distribution of value rather than its creation. Second, land rents are significant. Third, the role of financial capital is found more complex than traditionally argued. Finally, the approach provides a firm grounding for the unfashionable concept of class fraction.

ACCOUNTING AND THE POLITICS OF DIVESTMENT

This study examines how accounting discourses and calculations were deployed in the divestment debate at a Canadian university to articulate a politics of the status quo. Starting from a political economy of accounting perspective, we argue that: (1) the ideological effect of accounting is to foreclose other narratives and value positions, (2) in doing so, accounting plays a central role in the accumulation of capital and the appropriation of surplus value, and (3) accounting is able to fulfil these functions not only because it harmonizes with other discourses but also because accounting expertise is asymmetrically distributed. The current analysis furthers our understanding of the roles played by accounting and financial experts in the maintenance of dominant class hegemony.

Social Science and Contemporary Society

Social science has developed on the premises of social and scientific optimism and as the intellectual pendant of a liberal ideology which sought to manage change and claimed to be able to eliminate the sources of social unhappiness. Modernity has been justified on the materialist and collectivist bases of the amelioration of the conditions of life and of social justice for all. But these have proved to be unfulfillable promises which are no longer trusted. Furthermore, capital accumulation is incompatible with this legitimation of modernity because it is based on the appropriation of surplus value by some from others. How can social science and social scientists respond to the present era of pessimism in which the limits of the liberal and capitalist agendas have been recognized? Social science must recreate itself: the key element is the return of substantive rationality to the centre of our intellectual concerns. Science is never disinterested and empiricism always presumes prior commitments. The ambiguity of Weber's distinction between formal and substantive rationality is built into the modern world's geoculture. Substantive rationality involves the choice of a moral politics which addresses the issues of collective welfare and freedom from subordination to a formal rationality masking a substantive irrationality. The role of the intellectual class is to illumine our common, collective, choices.

The political economy of Guinea-Bissau: second thoughts

legitimation crisis. I was sceptical of giving politics primacy. To me the heart of the problem was economic: the attempted monopolisation of the economy by the government of Guinea-Bissau. I identified this as the primary source of peasant alienation and felt that a restructuring of the economy to meet the needs and desires of the majority was the necessary stimulus for a rebirth of the political process. My argument was that trade liberalisation, for example, would lead to a demand for a more democratic politics from the people who had the most to gain from economic restructuring. Our collaboration made me realise that to prioritise either politics or economics was to create a false dichotomy. The two are inseparable. Realising this made me understand that the current leaders of Guinea-Bissau could not on their own enact a policy of restructuring. No matter how enlightened they were individually or as a group, no matter how well intentioned, the structure of politics and economics they inherited from the Portuguese was too much a part of their experience of power for them to change it voluntarily. In other words, the country's leadership was not about to commit class suicide, despite Amilcar Cabral's admonitions. Outside pressure was necessary and the kind of transformation that would take place depended upon the source of that pressure. It was in this context that peasant political organisation was necessary. The framework of analysis we adopted in order to understand the political economy of Guinea-Bissau entailed, first of all, examining the overall social relations of production and exchange in the country. This examination revealed that a kind of class relationship had developed in which state officials-whether in rural development programmes or in the state marketing agencies-assumed an essentially exploitative position vis-a-vis rural producers and workers. Characterising this relationship was not a simple matter. On one level, exploitation was of a state capitalist or, perhaps more appropriately, of a state socialist nature since appropriation of surplus value from the countryside was said to be carried out in order to lay the foundations of industrialisation. The fact that this development strategy was abortive and

Should Feminists Oppose Prostitution

Because sexuality is a social construction, individuals as individuals are not free to experience eros just as they choose. Yet just as the extraction and appropriation of surplus value by the capitalist represents a choice available, if not to individuals, to society as a whole, so too sexuality and the forms taken by eros must be seen as at some level open to change. [NANCY HARTSOCK, Money, Sex and Power]'

Marx, Justice, and The Dialectic Method

Marx, Justice, and The Dialectic Method PHILIP J. KAIN AN INTERESTINGCONTROVERSY has recently been provoked by Allen Wood. He argues that capitalism, for Marx, "cannot be faulted as far as justice is concerned." For Marx, the concept of justice belonging to any society is rooted in, grows out of, and expresses that particular society's mode of production. Justice is not a standard by which human reason in the abstract measures actions or institutions--there is no eternal, unchanging norm of justice. Each social epoch gives rise to its own standard; each generally lives up to it; and each must be measured by this standard alone. Thus, in Wood's view, capitalism is perfectly just for Marx.' Nor does Wood think that the capitalist's appropriation of surplus value is taken to be unjust by Marx. In capitalist society, the worker is generally paid the full value of his or her labor power. The value of labor power is determined, like the value of any other commodity, by the amount of labor time required for its production, here, what it takes to keep the laborer alive and working. The exchange between capitalist and worker is assumed to be an exchange of equivalents and, as Wood says, is, in Marx's opinion, "no injustice at all" to the worker. It is true that the laborer is not paid the value of the product which is produced--a value which would be. higher than the value of the worker's labor power. The difference between these two sums is appropriated by the capitalist and is the source of surplus value. But in capitalist society, according to Wood, the worker is not due this extra sum. The capitalist purchases labor power from the worker, not finished products . The exchange between worker and capitalist is thus an exchange of t A. W. Wood, "The Marxian Critique of Justice" (hereafter "Critique")in Marx, Justice, and Histo~: A "Philosophyand Public Affairs" Reader (hereafter MJH), ed. M. Cohen, T. Nagel, and T. Scanlon(Princeton: PrincetonUniversityPress,198o), 3, 13, t5-16- A. W.Wood,"Marx on Right and Justice: A Replyto Husami"(hereafter "Reply")in MJH, Io7--109. [523] 524 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY ~4:4 OCTOBER 1986 equivalents, and according to Wood it is a just transaction, both for capitalism and for Marx." It follows from all of this, for Wood, that one cannot condemn a society as unjust by using the standards of a later or different society. Thus, in Wood's opinion, slavery, for Marx, must be accepted as perfectly just in the context of ancient society despite the fact that it would be unjust in a capitalist or socialist society. So also, capitalism must be accepted asjust despite the fact that socialist society would have a very different standard of justice. Socialist society would not be able to condemn capitalism as unjust because its standards would not be rationally applicable to capitalism,s There are no transcuhural or transhistorical norms of justice. Wood's views have been rejected by other writers, among them, Husami. The latter cites many passages where Marx, if he does not actually say that capitalism is unjust, certainly employs the sort of language typically used in moral condemnation. Husami also claims that Wood overlooks a crucial matter. Husami agrees that the moral standards of any epoch are, as Wood holds, determined by the given mode of production, hut they are also, and Wood does not see this, determined by class structure, i.e., by the conditions, consciousness, and interests of particular classes. Thus, while capitalism will be just for the capitalist class by capitalist standards, it will be unjust for the proletariat by proletarian standards? It is also the case, for Husami, that from the proletarian perspective the capitalist's appropriation of surplus value is unjust. Moreover, Husami finds no evidence to suggest that it is illegitimate, in Marx's view, to judge an earlier or different society by an independent moral standard. In fact, he thinks that we can find Marx doing so) The disagreement between Wood and Husami, on the surface at least, appears direct, straightforward, and clear cut. It seems that we must simply decide...

A Note on Habermas and the Labor Theory of Value

Jtirgen Habermas' recent book contains a chapter in which he rejects labor theory of value.l Perhaps it is more correct to say that he revises theory, since he only rejects it in its outdated Marxist form. The base of Habermas' reasoning is a thesis found in much of thought emanating Frankfurt School. As a matter of convenience I shall refer to it simply as the containment By his insistence on a revision of Marxist conception of labor theory of value, Habermas pushes containment thesis to its most coherent and complete development. In his of Marx, Habermas goes beyond Marcuse's philosophical vision of Keynesian period of monopoly capitalism as one-dimensional society. By revising labor theory of value, Habermas gains a superior conceptualization of containment thesis. Although superior, it is nonetheless mistaken. The mistake, however, does not detract importance of attempt. For if containment thesis is valid, not merely at surface level of economic appearances, or as Marx says, from bourgeois point of view,'2 but also at deeper level of historical development, then it must be shown that and how contradiction between labor and value, which Marx identified as real barrier to capitalist production, is abrogated or effectively neutralized. This is what Habermas proposes to do, and outcome of his attempt, its clear failure, will contribute decisively, one hopes, to closing off another revisionist inroad, as well as giving impetus to attempt to recover and appreciate dialectical dimension in Marxism. The general equation of value and labor-time was an insight of classical political economy. Without being conscious of it, capitalism is practical application of this knowledge, i.e. art of appropriating wealth (value) through organization of laborers and exploitation of their labor-power. The specific manner of doing this, of exploitation, was analyzed by Marx in his critique of classical political economy. The secret lies in appropriation of surplus value or that portion of working day in which value is produced over and above what is necessary to maintain laborers at a given standard of existence. In this sense surplus value is equivalent to surplus labor-time. Capitalists try to increase it by altering forces of production in order to increase productivity. This cheapens goods necessary to maintain labor-force at a given standard of existence and thus increases that portion of working day that can be given over to production of surplus value. However, in cheapening value of goods produced, capitalists are at same time causing rate of profit sale of these goods to fall. While capitalists develop forces of production through creation of a higher