Capitalist Mode Of Production Research Articles

Exploitation, Appropriation, and Subsumption

This paper addresses exploitation in the context of commodity production by worker-controlled enterprises, arguing that cooperative/collective social relations within the firm don't suffice to guarantee absence of exploitation. Labor in worker-controlled enterprises is not formally subsumed to capital, but this doesn't preclude alternative forms of exploitative appropriation, including noncapitalist appropriation and other forms of capitalist appropriation beyond the “capitalist mode of production” and its formal subsumption of labor. Marx noted the possibility of “capitalist exploitation without the capitalist mode of production,” meaning workers empowered to direct their own labor process but enmeshed in financial relations allowing a formal but not a real capacity to (fully) appropriate their own surplus labor. Analysis should not assume that real appropriation follows automatically from the power to direct the labor process. Avoidance of exploitation in a commodity setting requires an institutional superstructure allowing collective determination of and consent to the basic “rules” for the market sphere.

REVIEW ARTICLE

For the last thirty years, we have been witnessing an upsurge of the capitalist mode of production in a neoliberal avatar. One consequence is that the political state has become more brutal and oppressive. The hard-won welfare state has been gradually dismantled under the pressures of free market ‘logic’. On the other hand, we have also witnessed the rise of identity politics in myriad forms, invariably justified with the help of postmodernist notions. This identity politics proclaims itself as being far more radical than the orthodox left. The paper, by a close reading of the book The Sikh Memory and by tracing postmodern thinkers' political affiliations, argues that any kind of politics that ignores the fundamental issues of capitalism, class, labour and social injustice in favour of identitarianism and such things as cultural memory, collective unconscious, affect, intuition, aesthetic and non-rational has an inherent tendency to fall prey to fundamentalist political practices in one form or another.

Political Economy of the Telugu Film Industry

India has the distinction of being one of the largest producers of films. The Telugu film industry is the second largest in India, sometimes producing more number of films than the Hindi film industry. However, there has been a serious dearth of ‘good cinema’, as evidenced by the absence of National Awards in the Telugu language category over the last several years. The analysis in this article is based on the assumption that alternative perspectives find space even within the capitalist mode of production when contradictory pressures of class interests operate. In the cultural industries, the intellectuals—both bourgeois and progressive—are jostling for space. In this struggle, there are class contradictions within the cultural industries, which enable the progressive intellectual to play a visible role, even though it is not a dominant one. The near complete absence of such spaces and processes is the subject of this analysis. This article examines the practices within the Telugu film industry and attempts to identify the barriers to creativity and new talent using Marxian analysis. The study comes to the broad conclusion that given the social totality of Telugu society, a better regulatory environment could make a difference.

The Spaces of Capital: The Political Form of Capitalism and the Internationalization of the State1

Abstract: In the course of the neoliberal globalization offensive capital has become more international. This development has placed the question of the state on the agenda once again. The central issue here is the extent to which the existing plurality of states should be seen as a historically contingent state of affairs which might not in principle last indefinitely, or as a structural component of the capitalist mode of production. One important aspect of this issue is the question of how the relationship between the “political form” of capitalism and “institutions” is understood. More often than not, even approaches that use Marxist theory have tended to address this question in an unsatisfactory manner.

Beyond the Civilizational Crisis: On Determinism

AbstractThis article analyzes crisis as part of deeper trends determined in historical development from the perspective of two important theoretical streams: firstly, Analytical Marxism, and secondly, the Critical Theory of Society (the Frankfurt School). It shows both general determinants of historical development and pathological determinants of historical development. Examining Analytical Marxism and its theory of technological determinism, the article explains crisis in respect of situations of systemic changes mainly from the perspective of the relationship between forces of production and relations of production. Examining the Critical Theory, the article clarifies the role of the pathological determinants of instrumental rationality in human history in relation to efforts at human emancipation. In the article, crisis is seen as the superficial appearance of the historical developmental trends where there are inherent permanent tendencies to crisis. Crisis is a temporary eruption of the deeper contradictory development of the capitalist mode of production and other systems within the history of human civilization. The article discusses an issue of determinism as a necessary framework for the interpretation of crisis, and offers an interpretation of the preconditions of crisis not only from the economic point of view, but also, on a deeper level, in a civilizational sense.

Relações de Produção e Qualificação Profissional: Problematizações Acerca da “Sociedade do Conhecimento”

In the last four decades, the capitalist mode of production has undergone a restructuring process of its production base, which some authors refer to as the model of flexible accumulation. In contrast to the Taylorist-Fordist work organization, this new moment, due to its flexibility, requires skilled and competitive professionals that constantly seek new skills. For that reason, but also for the need to use Information and Communication Technologies in this process, discourses on the society have become common. Given these considerations, the present theoretical work aims at posing some questions, however temporary, regarding the existing relations between the demands of the flexible model of capital accumulation and the nature of knowledge required from professionals. The advocated hypothesis is that, like other historical moments, the ongoing rationalization of production processes now tends to be accompanied by the growing limitation of a socio-political and economic knowledge – built in the production relations – previously in possession of employees. Therefore, this article points to the fact that the basis for the society is unveiled as potentially ideological and misleading.

Kondratjevo bangos ir kapitalizmo tipai

The paper presents new evolutionary typology of capitalism in outline. This typology is grounded in the Marxist conception of the mode of production that considers as distinguishing features of a mode of production the character of the production forces and that of the property relations for means of production. However, the thesis of K. Marx is rejected that capitalist relation of production are no more adeaquate to production forces. Instead, the view is substantiated that the development of the production forces causes the replacement of one capitalist mode of production by another capitalist mode of production. In the analysis of the development of production forces under capitalism, the ideas of Nikolai Kondratieff and Joseph A. Schumpeter on long business cycles are used. In the development of the production forces since industrial revolution in the late XVIII century, 5 technological economical paradigms are distinguished. Each of them is foundation of a separate capitalist mode of production. 5 capitalist modes of production corresponding to the 5 long Kondratieff waves are main evolutionary types of capitalism. They are (1) local capitalism of individual and family enterprise owners; (2) local capitalism of small and middle closed joint stock companies (corporations); (3) national capitalism of big private corporations; (4) state regulated national capitalism of poblic corporations; (5) globalized transnational capitalism of investition funds. These
 types can be differentiated into subtypes, like liberal market and coordinated capitalism for type (4). This typology is most adequate for the analysis of the economic life in the advanced countries. In the analysis of the social economic reality from the periphery and semiperiphery of the contemporary world capitalist system, the types of political oligarchic, state and state monopolist capitalism are more useful.

Labeling the Good: Alternative Visions and Organic Branding in Sweden in the Late Twentieth Century

The past decade's rapid expansion of a global market for organic food has set powerful economic and political forces in motion. The most important dividing line is whether organic food production should be an alternative to or a niche within a capitalist mode of production. To explore this conflict the article analyzes the formation of a market for eco-labeled milk in Sweden. The analysis draws on three aspects: the strategy of agri-business, the role of eco-labeling, and the importance of inter-organizational dynamics. Based on archival studies, daily press, and interviews, three processes are emphasized: the formative years of the alternative movement in the 1970s, the founding of an independent eco-label (KRAV) in the 1980s, and a discursive shift from alternative visions to organic branding in the early 1990s following the entry of agri-business.

Populist Elements in Contemporary American Political Discourse

Granted that it would be absurd to characterize Obama as a populist president, this paper proceeds from Ernesto Laclau's conception of populism as consisting of ‘the formation of an internal antagonistic frontier separating the “people” from power’ and ‘an equivalential articulation of demands making the emergence of the “people” possible’ (2005:74). In the 2008 election, Obama was able to articulate a series of empty signifiers, found in such slogans as ‘Yes We Can,’ which came to represent a new collective identity of the ‘people’, thus constituting an instance of populism par excellence. As support for this theory of populism and its implications for contemporary American political discourse, this paper deconstructs the previously held functionalist assumptions and modernization theories – especially those propagated within Latin American case studies – that consign populism to a developmental stage in the capitalist mode of production or a historical outcome of underdeveloped democratic institutions in order to imagine a new science of rhetoric capable of analysing the synecdochical, metaphorical, and metonymical components ( Laclau, 2005 ) in the discursive construction of ‘the American people’.

Labeling the Good: Alternative Visions and Organic Branding in Sweden in the Late Twentieth Century

The past decade's rapid expansion of a global market for organic food has set powerful economic and political forces in motion. The most important dividing line is whether organic food production should be an alternative to or a niche within a capitalist mode of production. To explore this conflict the article analyzes the formation of a market for eco-labeled milk in Sweden. The analysis draws on three aspects: the strategy of agri-business, the role of eco-labeling, and the importance of inter-organizational dynamics. Based on archival studies, daily press, and interviews, three processes are emphasized: the formative years of the alternative movement in the 1970s, the founding of an independent eco-label (KRAV) in the 1980s, and a discursive shift from alternative visions to organic branding in the early 1990s following the entry of agri-business.

Labor theory of value and the uncertainty in capitalist economy

This article aims to offer a reply to Steedman’s critique of Marx’s labor theory of value. Although this critique having been there for about three decades, the anti-critiques from Marxists are up to date flawed with fatal limitation, losing sight of an important dimension of labor theory of value, i.e., without taking it as a theoretical tool of understanding the uncertainty rooted in capitalist mode of production. The first part of this article reviews the controversy initiated by Steedman. Part 2 discusses Marx’s dual theory of market value and Rubin’s interpretation. Our view is that, if Rubin’s interpretation is accepted, a refutation of Steedman’s critique towards Marx will be impossible. Part 3 of this article explores the possible reconstruction of market value in the perspective of the dynamics in the pivoting of market value. We concludes that, the relationship between the standard condition of production and value is not, as argued by Steedman, of deterministic and one-directional character. For Marx, labor theory of value is applied to analyze the uncertain relation between the means and the end, the condition and the result of capitalist production. Meanwhile, another reply is attempted towards the negative comment on labor theory of value made by contemporary evolutionary economist such as Hodgson. In our view, Marx’s labor theory of value is not irrelevant as claimed by Hodgson to the main topics of evolutionary economics such as variety and “natural selection.” It is through labor theory of value that Marx explains the co-evolution of technology and economy.

Diversity in the lean automobile factory: doing class through gender, disability and age

This study advances a critical re-conceptualization of ‘diversity’ through class. Drawing on the case of CarCo, the Belgian branch of a North American automobile company, I show how the discursive constructions of various socio-demographic identities reflect underlying class relations between labour and capital and are, in turn, implicated in their reproduction. Reflecting the instrumental conceptualization of labour as the source of economic value in the capitalist mode of production, female, older and disabled workers were discursively constructed as unable or unwilling to perform as expected within the factory lean production system. These negative identities in turn legitimized the elimination of ‘different’ workers in the company restructuring and the outsourcing of the phases of the production process that could be carried out by them, materially reproducing class relations. The analysis unveils the ‘dark’ business case against diversity at CarCo, a company which was renowned as a ‘best’ case for diversity in Belgium. I argue that the re-conceptualization of diversity through class offers a powerful analytical tool to better understand how unequal power relations are played out in contemporary organizations.

Speaking out: How organizations value and how value organizes

‘There is no alternative!’, declared British prime minister Margaret Thatcher three decades ago. The bald statement, repeated ad nauseam, became neoliberal mantra. It seeks to universalize and naturalize an ethical framework that privileges market value to the exclusion of other values. This ethical framework—or value system—determines the way in which organizations value human actions and, hence, the way that (market) value organizes human relations—or labour. Value is the form that labour takes within the capitalist mode of production. So claimed Diane Elson in an essay published in the year of Thatcher’s election. ‘The value theory of labour’ (Elson, 1979) was an intervention into a lively Marxist debate on the ‘labour theory of value’ and the ‘law of value’. Elson was criticizing on the one hand, those who suggested that Marx’s theory of value was a proof of exploitation and, on the other, so-called Sraffians or neo-Ricardian Marxists, who sought to explain exchange-value or price magnitudes according to some quantity of (abstract) labour ‘embodied’—or ‘congealed’—within the commodity. Marx’s value theory was not a theory of price, she argued: labour magnitudes do not determine price (and nor do they determine explotation). In contrast, Elson’s approach runs not from labour to value, but from value to labour. Thus we should understand Marx’s theory as a theory of labour, a value theory of labour, a way to help us understand the way that work in capitalist societies tends to be organized and indeed imposed.

Política social na América Latina:

O presente artigo resulta de uma análise crítica sobre a configuração da política social na América Latina, a partir de seu terreno histórico no âmbito do modo capitalista de produção: seus determinantes estruturais sob a insígnia da dependência e da superexploração da força de trabalho nos países periféricos. O exame proposto considera a totalidade das relações sociais de produção no capitalismo, de modo que nos apropriamos, portanto, de categorias e conceitos próprios do materialismo dialético e do pensamento crítico e teórico Latino-Americano, especialmente alinhado a partir da Teoria Marxista da Dependência.

« la forme dans laquelle peuvent se mouvoir les contradictions ».

The article begins with an appraisal of the legacy of Marxist legal theory in the last century as the starting-point from which to update the various attempts to grasp the connection between the capitalist mode of production and modern law. By way of a critical inquiry of its merits and failures, the article tries to re-construct the findings of Marxist legal theory and thus propose an updated version of a materialist legal theory. The main argument is that law in capitalist societies takes the form of a technology of cohesion which possesses its own logic of self reproduction. Law’s ´relational autonomy` is both an effect of its autonomisation from social relations, behind the back of its producers, and the main condition for a deferral of power. Under the structural conditions of the legal form, juridical intellectuals organise hegemony via the infrastructure of a seemingly neutral legal argumentation.

Conflict and repression in an Argentinean car factory: a cycle of resistance from a worker’s perspective

This article presents a worker’s account of two factory occupations in Argentina. This reconstruction, rather than focusing on the role of specific agents, allows an unveiling of the dynamics through which the clash between the employer’s drive for profitability and workers’ interests in defence of their salaries developed. A cycle of conflict, resistance, repression and finally workers’ subordination and acceptance of flexible employment conditions can be identified. Despite the tendency of the capitalist mode of production to produce divisions among workers in the workplace and society, the article highlights the importance of direct action, solidarity and democratic organising as workers’ tools to react to and transform the system.

The Global Economic Crisis in the Perspective of Keynesian Business Cycle Theory

As a starting point, the article reviews Keynesian business cycle theory and identifies the cause of economic crisis to blind investment and lack of demand. The article also indicates that fundamentally, the 1929 Great Depression and current global economic recession are the inevitable outcomes of capitalist mode of production. After that, it demonstrates that the strategy of trying to develop public economy as well as increasing its influences and controls over investment and consumption is the only way to limit vicious expansion of capitalist mode of production and prevent future economic crises.

Where does the 'Third Way' lead

In this paper author examines unusual phenomenon that 'Third Way' and 'Risk Society' paradigm between 'old' social democracy and neo-liberalism, elaborated by sociologists in Great Britain, Germany, France and US in 1990s, the editorial writer for the newest Collection of social transformation processes' research findings in Serbia explicitly, together with other contributors, promotes as the most adequate approach to examination of contemporary societies a dozen of years later. Curiosity consists in the fact that the end of the first decade of the XXI Century presents precisely the historical moment in which explosive manifestation of systemic global accumulation of capital crisis empirically reveals inherent contradictions of both capitalist mode of production and the 'Third Way' and 'Risk Society' paradigm. The key finding of the internationally known and domestic partisans of the 'Third Way' and 'Risk Society' paradigm main theses' critical analysis is that they lead to normalization of 'risks' capitalist social relations reproduced on the basis of an implicit or explicit ideological claim that there is no alternative to them.

The Role of Accounting and Financial Information in the Consolidation of the Financial Logic of Capitalism: Analysis from the Financial Crisis

Accounting is of vital importance in the economies thanks to its contribution in the decision making process and control over wealth, this makes it an instrument of great importance for the capitalist mode of production. That's why this letter attempts to perform an approximation of the role of accounting as a means of legitimizing the capitalist financial logic and practices that characterize this system in pursuit of the objectives of profit maximization and, thanks to which have made bad decisions by executives and investors, creating with this financial crisis and are accompanied by disclosure of misinformation and flawed by the organizations, and where regulation and risk management become key points.

Qualidade de vida no trabalho: controle e escondimento do mal-estar do trabalhador

Este texto tenta fazer eco à desconstrução dos programas de QVT, na ótica do artigo da professora Valquíria Padilha. O ponto de partida são as considerações de Castoriadis (1997), relativas à 'racionalidade' do capitalismo que, fundada na conformidade entre meios e fins, não se interroga sobre a própria racionalidade desses fins, supostamente inquestionáveis. Relembra-se também aqui a atualidade das análises de Marx sobre o modo de produção capitalista e seu sistema de trocas, fundado na mais-valia e que faz da alienação a essência do trabalho. Tal modo de produção continua sendo uma fonte permanente de acidentes, doenças e mortes no trabalho, fazendo milhões de vítimas, anualmente, em todo o planeta. As relações entre capital e trabalho se traduzem em um conflito inconciliável, que os ideólogos da gestão de recursos humanos tentam, no entanto, 'desconhecer' ou ocultar. As sucessivas inovações tecnológicas estão orientadas, segundo Castoriadis, para a redução e posterior eliminação do homem, nos processos de produção, embora isso só seja parcialmente possível. Assim sendo, a 'racionalidade' da gestão dos recursos humanos deve recorrer a sucessivas estratégias de manipulação-sedução do trabalhador, através dos recorrentes modismos gerenciais, entre os quais se inserem os programas de QVT.