Commodity Economy Research Articles

Prerequisite Conditions to Enforcement of the Bankruptcy Law

With the deepening of the development of the planned commodity economy and structural reform, we are brought face to face with the problem of bankrupt enterprises and unemployment. Under the circumstances, it is of major significance for us to launch discussions on formulation of the Bankruptcy Law and its pilot projects. Nevertheless, are the objective conditions ripe for a universal enforcement of such a law under the current economic framework and mode of operations? What impact would it have on the national economy if the law were to be enforced when conditions have yet to become mature? In this article, we would like to offer some opinions in this regard.

Reform, local political institutions and the village economy in China

Recent reforms in China have far‐reaching implications for the form and content of village political and economic institutions and their relations with peasant households, family and kin groups. This article examines the recent separation of economic and political authority at the local level and the substitution of new township and village institutions for the commune, production brigade and production teams. With the development of the commodity economy and new economic associations, the government predicts a diminution in the production responsibility and autonomy of the newly emergent peasant household. However, a preliminary examination of the politics of the local economy suggest that peasant households may have developed alternative strategies based on new family forms and networks that potentially challenge village‐wide political and economic structures.

Why Rural Divorces Are on the Rise

Chinese rural areas are currently in a stage of transition from a semi-self-contained to a commodity economy and from traditional to modern agricultural production. What is the marriage situation? From a study we made of statistics provided by the Weifang Intermediate People's Court and Wulian, Zhuchen, and Gaomi county people's courts of Weifang municipality, Shandong province, we found that today, the majority of marriages in the localities under their jurisdiction are those in which the couples themselves have the final say, whether they fell in love themselves or were introduced through a third party. On the other hand, some new problems have appeared, including a rising divorce rate.

Constraining capitalism? contradictions of self‐reliance in Vanuatu fisheries development

Two projects in a village fisheries development program illustrate contradictions concerning self‐reliance for rural islanders and the state in the Pacific island Republic of Vanuatu. Efforts to extend involvement in a capitalist mode of production, and so diversify the monocrop coconut economy and encourage national self‐reliance, encounter an established form of simple commodity economy in which islanders seek to preserve their own version of self‐reliance in ways that constrain development projects. The paper examines why fishing projects are not producing full‐time fishermen as planners expected and suggests how islanders are able to appropriate the projects, shaping them to fit into a local way of life in which “no one is a full‐time anything.” Projects that are not financially viable may nevertheless be successful when viewed within the context of a simple commodity economy characterized by intermittent production for the market in response to cash requirements, and by opting out of production for the market in response to dissatisfaction with social and economic conditions. [Vanuatu, self‐reliance, fisheries, development, simple commodity economy]

Commodities in crisis: An overview of the main issues

This introductory article provides a general review of some of the main issues facing the world commodity economy in the 1980s, particularly those arising from the dramatic collapse in the foreign exchange earnings of developing countries from their exports of primary commodities. The subject matter covered in this special issue of World Development includes not only the more traditional concerns related to short-term commodity market instability and longer-term issues such as agricultural protectionism, but also the relevance of the linkages between the commodity sector and the rest of the international economic system for the stability of the world economy as a whole. This article covers more aspects of the “commodity problem” than can be considered in detail in the subsequent articles prepared for a single issue of this journal. Nonetheless, the present introduction should make a contribution to identifying useful areas for further research, as well as focusing on some of the options in the field of international commodity policy.

Market Mechanism and Macroeconomic Control

"The Party Central Committee's Proposal on Formulating the Seventh Five-Year Plan for the National Economy and Social Development" pointed out that, in establishing a new economic structure, efforts should be made to fit in the needs of a planned commodity economy based upon public ownership. Three key elements are to be grasped: infusing enterprises with new vitality, establishing a commodity market, and an indirect control system. The three go together. This article will focus on some questions of the market mechanism and macroeconomic control under existing conditions.

Proper Attention Should Be Paid to the Supplementary Role of Microeconomic Regulation in Enterprises

Following the development of a planned commodity economy and reforms in the urban and rural economic system, enhancement of decision-making powers of enterprises and efforts to activate the economy, a multiform economic regulation in industrial and commercial enterprises and between them has gradually emerged in cities and the countryside. I refer to it as microeconomic regulation, which is playing an important supplementary role to the state-regulated macroeconomics.

Horizontal Economic Integration Is a Beachhead to Launch Urban Reform

China's rural economic reform was launched through the establishment of the system of contracted responsibility for production. With this breakthrough, a series of further reforms touching on both the economic foundations and the superstructure were possible. These included raising the procurement price of farm produce, opening farm produce markets, effecting necessary changes in the system of unified state purchase and acquisition of certain products, readjusting production structures, and restoring rural administration. As a result, many successful specialized households, specialized villages, and different types of economic affiliations formed spontaneously by the peasants have emerged. All this gave a great spur to the development of rural industry and brought China's rural areas into a new era of flourishing commodity economy.

Socialism and the Commodity Economy

The reform of China's economic system has entered a new stage of all-round undertaking with urban reform as its focus. The "Resolution on the Reform of the Economic System," approved by the Third Plenum of the Twelfth CCP Central Committee, serves as its general program and blueprint. The resolution addressed in a theoretic way a series of fundamental questions about the socialist economy. The most important one was the break away from the traditional view contending that socialism and commodity economy are mutually exclusive. The resolution clearly pointed out that we must truly turn our enterprises into relatively independent socialist commodity producers, and that a socialist planned economy must consciously employ the law of value, that it is a planned commodity economy operating under a system of public ownership. It further indicated the basic difference between the socialist commodity economy and capitalism, and that full development of a commodity economy is a prerequisite for the modernization of our economy. The discussions and elaboration concerning socialist commodity economy in the resolution greatly broadened our vistas and deepened our scientific comprehension of socialism. This article attempts to investigate a number of problems related to the full development of a commodity economy under socialism.

Theoretical Basis for Reform of the Planning System

The planning system holds a position of special importance in the "CCP Central Committee's Decision on Reforming the Economic System" adopted by the Third Plenum of the Twelfth Party Central Committee. The fundamental goal the "decision" set for the reform is to establish in China "a planning system that consciously applies the law of value to develop a socialist commodity economy." Stipulations carried by the "decision" affirm, on the one hand, the fact that this socialist country of ours continues to practice planned economy based on ownership by the whole people rather than a market economy totally regulated by the mechanism of market and, on the other hand, the idea that our socialist planning system should be one combining uniformity with flexibility. In terms of its entirety, our national economic plan should only be a broad outline leaving much room for maneuver. By striking an overall balance and employing economic devices, it should exercise an effective control over major areas and give a free rein to minor things. A mandatory plan should be provided for major products that have a bearing on the national economy and the people's livelihood and need to be distributed and allocated through the arrangement of the state as well as vital economic activities that involve the overall situation. As for the other products and economic activities in large numbers, we should, in light of their different conditions, provide with them a guidance plan or allow them to be completely regulated by the market. In regard to ways of planning, we should gradually narrow the extent to which the mandatory plan applies and properly widen the scope of the guidance plan.

Does a commodity economy enrich the few while ruining the masses? Differentiation among petty commodity producers in guatemala

In this paper I discuss the way in which rural artisans in one municipio of Guatemala organize production and how this organization impedes the differentiation of the artisanal population into owners and workers. I show that categories of owners and workers exist in the municipio, but that these categories do not reproduce themselves as classes; instead, they reproduce each other through the life cycle. In order to explain this phenomenon, I look at internal relations of production, the external environment of large‐scale capital, and the role of migration and the stale in the creation of a permanent Guatemalan proletariat and in the creation of an undifferentiated artisanal economy.

Is Not the Law of Value a Law of Commodity Economy?

The No. 11 issue of Jingji yanjiu of 1978 carried Comrade Sun Yefang's article Achieve a Comprehensive Understanding of Chairman Mao's Exposition on the Law of Value. I have gained much benefit from reading it. However, Comrade Sun holds that the law of value is not unique to commodity economy and that the law will continue to exist and play its role in the noncommodity economy of the future. This proposition is difficult to comprehend. Here I would like to present some of my personal views on this issue of whether the law of value is a law of commodity economy, in order to exchange views with Comrade Sun as well as with other comrades.

The micro‐organisation of backwardness in Central Sardinia: A reappraisal of Luxemburg's ‘three phases’ of underdevelopment1

It is argued here that unlike theories which view underdevelopment from the ‘world system’ perspective, Rosa Luxemburg's critical elaboration of the concept of primitive accumulation is a key contribution to the understanding of dependency and backwardness at the local level. Luxemburg outlines three phases in the destruction of pre‐capitalist formations by capitalism: the separation of the producer from the traditional bonds and hierarchies; introduction of a commodity economy and the separation of handicraft from agriculture; the separation of the producer from the means of production. In contrast to Luxemburg, it is argued that this final phase has not often been fully achieved and that it has been replaced by a partial/temporal separation of peasant producers from their means of production. Luxemburg's approach nevertheless shows how economistic interpretations which deal neither with the transformation of the class structure nor the internal political structure of dependent societies can be overcome. The case material here, which confirms much of Luxemburg's three phase schema stems from a community study conducted by one of the authors in Sardinia.

Tax incidence in a two good model

In a two consumer, two commodity economy with an excise tax on one good, analysis is done of the effects of lump sum transfers between consumers and of an increase in the excise tax, proceeds being returned as a lump sum. Changes in price, incomes, and utilities are calculated in terms of demand and supply derivatives and changes in profit shares going to the two consumers. Analysis complements that of Harberger by concentrating on the demand side and considering only a reduced form of supply responses. Some of the analysis parallels consideration of the classical transfer problem in international trade.

Commodity price stabilization: Its effects on procedures and consumers

While much has been written about instability in commodity markets, relatively little discussion has taken place on the effects of removing or reducing this instability. This paper discusses the theoretical arguments which have been made in the past and makes some more heuristic points as a basis for further research. Further analysis must consider the implications of interdependence and the feedback effects of the global nature of the commodity economy.

Böhm-Bawerks Marx-Kritik. Eine Kritik ihrer Engelsschen Voraussetzungen / Böhm-Bawerk’s Critique of Marx. A Critique of its Engelsian Presupposition

Abstract Böhm-Bawerk in his refutation as well as Engels in his defence of Marx’s economical theory presuppose an interpretation of Marx’s theory of value which agrees with the third volume of Capital, but not with the first volume which was written later. The first volume’s theory of value, though written as its fist chapter, is not an argument to be accepted before accepting the analyses of commodity economy which follow, but a summary of the results of these analyses. It is incompatible with the third volume’s theory of value, since it does not determine the price by a quantity of abstract labour contained in the commodity; on the contrary, it determines this quantity by the price. There are, however, relics of the former theory of value in the first volume.

The Law of Value and Our Price Policy

Price is the product of a commodity economy. The price of a commodity in a capitalist country is determined by the law of value which, by means of price changes, spontaneously adjusts the production and distribution of commodities. In that context, price fluctuations are like a barometer that reflects capitalist economic conditions, especially various changes in market conditions. It points out to capitalists the directions of production growth and commodity flow; to a large extent it affects the livelihood of the laboring people. In a socialist state, the production and distribution of commodities are determined by state planning based on the law of the planned, proportionate development of the national economy. Commodity prices are also determined by state planning. Nonetheless, in determining commodity prices, it is necessary for the state to correctly utilize the law of value and to carefully consider the functions exercised by it. Socialist states enact a correct price policy in keeping with the la...

Plan and Market in the Socialist Economy

The socialist economy implies commodity production organized according to plan. A market, representing the sum total of economic relations connected with the sale of goods and with the transfer of these goods from producers to consumers, is an essential component of any commodity economy. That is why the mechanism of the planned functioning of the socialist economy also includes a market mechanism, whose operation is directed not only by the law of value, but also by the entire system of the economic laws of socialism.

A Study on the Sand-Pear Growing Area on the Matsukawa Fan in the Fukushima Basin

I. There is a concentrated sand-pear growing area-about 410 acres in area only in Noda-Mura, and about 860 acres including that in its neighbouring villages on the Matsukawa Fan in the south-east of the Fukushima Basin. In this report, the author intends to describe a sand-pear growing area which has been newly formed and developed centering around the middle part of the Matsukawa Fan.II. The description of the real circumstance of the sand-pear growing area on the Matsukawa Fan reveals that the core of the sand-pear raising area exists in the middle part of the fan, and the lower part is in the transitional stage. And this agricultural area has more advanced characters than that of paddy-field area. They are examined in Table 1-3.III. The problem proposedhere, in a word, is that the above mentioned situation of the fan is different from the general form that the clearing of fan area has been gegun earlier in its lower part neighbouring paddy-field area, consequently the economic level of farmers living there is higher in paddy-rice area. In this way, the reason why the difference is derived from should be revealed, and the forming process and the significance of physical features in each part of the area should be investigated.IV. The surface of the fan consists of thick deposits of gravels and sand, and the level of groundwater is very low showing 15-20 m in depth in its middle part, so that it is well drained for sand-pear growing. Paddy-culture is impossible here on account of poor irrigation and poor soil. Mulberries are the only plants that can be grown with difficulty. Such areas have been left uncultivated as “Kaya” plants (a kind of natural grass) growing places, or red pine woods, where no settlement was brought into being, until sand-pear growing has rapidly developed in groups since 1886.The Fukushima area, the eastern side of the fan, shows 11.8°C of annual air temperature and 1196.4 mm of precipitation, and has less rainfall in spring (April-June 400 mm), so that the fan area is favoured with climatic conditions suitable for the growing of sand-pear, in spite of occasional damages from strong wind, drought, and frost. Fortunately, the middle part of the fan is least suffered from damage of frost of all the parts of it. Furthermore, it is favoured with the period of shipment than other sand-pear producing regions, owing to its earlier maturing season of sand-pear (Fig. 8).V. A). In this area, the lower part of the fan could be cultivated as paddy-field 1, 000 years ago, whilethe middle part was left as an uncultivated land with bad physical conditions. Since 1850's, the increase of population, and the development of commodity economy have compelled the farmers there to adopt other farming systems or to be engaged in other occupations, and the depression of seri-culture and failure in rice growing have also afforded them the opportunities to introduce money crops, This is the background of the introduction and popularization of sand-pear growing. B). It is in 1880' s when sand-pear raising was adopted as a main farming or a kind of supplementary farming, Since 1893, the depression of seri-culutre and the higher maiket price of sand-pears had encouraged some of the farmers to culture sand-pears. They were poor farmers' second or third sons, tand abou 80 of them moved to the middle part of the fan from its neighbouring areas to clear the land for the purpose of culturing sand-pears. Thus sand-pear raising developed into the most favourable farming and its fields spread over the middle part showing 147 acres in extent in 1905, bearng no relation to the progress of paddy-fields in its lower part. C). Spurred by the good business conditions during 1918-19 and the higher price of sand-pears, the farmers in lower part of the fan converted mulberry fields to sand-pear fields, or brought waste-lands under cultivation for sand-pear raising.

The Development of the "Commodity Economy" in the "Settsu-Type" Areas during the Last Days of the Tokugawa Government

The Development of the "Commodity Economy" in the "Settsu-Type" Areas during the Last Days of the Tokugawa Government