Production Of Surplus Value Research Articles

That Obstinate Yet Elastic Natural Barrier

That Obstinate Yet Elastic Natural Barrier

Labor and the Imperialism of Finance

Organized labor has always privileged collective struggle at the point of production, judging it to be capital's most vulnerable point. Denying employers the labor power needed for the production of surplus value strikes at the reproduction and expansion of capital, the accumulation process which is the core of the system.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Confronting the Time Bind: Work, Family, and Capitalism

Socialists have long contended that capitalism produces distinctive and undesirable structures of time. Marx argued that capitalism created an ineluctable downward pressure on wages, forcing workers to work long hours in order to earn enough to sustain themselves. By the same token, lengthening the working day was one of the ways by which employers could increase the production of surplus-value. Marx's son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, added that capitalism disciplined workers by creating a kind of ideology of work, a moral compulsion to labor; although, in Lafargue's view, this was in part responsible for capitalism's periodic crises of overproduction, it was one of the ways by which employers were able to enforce work discipline.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Unproductive Labor and the Contradictory Movement of the Rate of Profit: A Comment on Moseley

This paper criticizes Moseley's claim that the cause in the fall in the conventional rate of profit in the postwar U.S. is due to the rise in unproductive labor over this period. I argue that Moseley employs a one-sided and static conception of unproductive labor. Unproductive labor is seen by Moseley to be simply a drag on surplus value production. In contrast, I argue that unproductive labor should be understood as both a drag and as an enhancement for the dynamic production of surplus value. I show in a model of the distribution of surplus value how the redistribution of unproductive labor can have contradictory effects on the value rate of profit.

Landscape and Surplus Value: The Making of the Ordinary in Brentwood, CA

In this paper I argue for a morphological perspective on landscape that takes seriously social intentionality and the complexity of struggles over production and reproduction. I develop an example from California's agricultural labor history to show the processes through which the landscape is constructed, Further, I show that the production of landscape is an important moment in the production of surplus value under capitalism, In turn, I use insights from social studies of science to suggest how, as the landscape becomes stabilized, its very ordinariness tends to mask the struggles that constituted its form.

A Political Ecology of the South

Enrique Leff's Ecologia y is a product of Third World radical ecology, representing views of leftist greens who are emerging as theorists and activists not only in Mexico but in many other countries of South (see, e.g., publication series State of India's Environment). book is shaped by two main influences: Marxism and Sachs's (1980) doctrine of ecodevelopment. It is Marxist in sense that it employs a historical-ecological and materialist perspective and links ecological themes with social struggles: Historical materialism provides basis for explaining process of articulation between nature and society as a form of incorporation of natural processes into production, accumulation, and reproduction of capital (1986: 32, our translation here and elsewhere). It integrates Marxist constructs with ecological principles in conceptualizing conditions of production (e.g., productivity of natural resources; see also O'Connor, 1988, among others). In his explanation of capitalist crises, for example, Leff emphasizes not contradiction between growth and exploitation of working class but constraints imposed on accumulation of by scarcity of resources and pollution: The relations of production that permit exploitation and appropriation of surplus labor produce surplus value, but conditions of productivity of natural resources and forms of property affect rate and differential distribution of that surplus value (1986: 37). Leff suggests that the imminent exhaustion of some resources . . . in process of production and consumption caused by capitalist development has reduced relative endowments of natural use values, raising their prices and increasing costs of production. In other words, crises of due to impairment of conditions of production are perceived only through

Kalecki and Marx on effective demand

Whereas Marx and Kalecki shared a broad vision of the capitalist system, the convergence of their theories occurred mainly on the ground of effective demand. Marx furnished Kalecki with the idea that deficiencies in aggregate demand are rooted in the normal workings of the capitalist system, but he did so without providing any theoretical demonstration of this proposition. Kalecki was confident, however, that he had solved Marx's unresolved problems by proving that the equations that determine the level of total output are contained in the scheme of extended reproduction. Whether Marx would have considered Kalecki's solution appropriate for the system inCapital is quite another matter. As explained above, Kalecki shifted the emphasis from the production of surplus value to the realization of surplus value and from the conditions of exploitation to the conditions of the market. It is a change that Marx would have had difficulties in accepting. Indeed, it was precisely his reluctance to follow this route that steered Marx away from an attempt at solving the problem of effective demand; a problem he skirted when he was in the process of formulating his schemes of reproduction. If one adds Kalecki's interest in market prices and his distaste for the labor theory of value, it would be difficult to avoid the conclusion that Kalecki was neither a faithful disciple of Marx nor a single-minded articulator of his economic theories. It has been argued that this was precisely Kalecki's strength [Robinson, 1979, p. 253]: “With the light that Sraffa has thrown on the theory of value and Kalecki on the process of realization of the surplus, we can develop a complete system, not ofneo-Marxism but ofintelligible Marxism.”

Understanding ‘Capital’ — Marx's Economic Theory

On Reading Marx: Method The Commodity: Labor, Value, Money The Theory of Capital and Surplus Value Production under Capitalism The Reproduction of Capital The Equalization of the Rate of Profit The Division of Surplus Value The Falling Rate of Profit The Theory of Capitalist Crisis Socialism Suggested Readings References Index

Pažiūra į kapitalizmą ikikariniuose A. Maceinos ir P. Jako raštuose

Straipsnyje tiriamos Lietuvos katalikiškųjų modernistų (A. Maceinos ir P. Jako) pažiūros į kapitalizmą. Buržuazinės Lietuvos klerikalai kapitalizmą laikė visų pirma ūkine sistema, neprieštaraujančia žmogaus prigimčiai. Jie pripažino, kad ši sistema netobula, manė, kad būtina ją tobulinti. Siūlomos reformos apsiribojo išorinėmis ūkinėmis priemonėmis, faktiškai turėjo vieną tikslą – sušvelninti kapitalistinius santykius, o jų neigiamus padarinius kiek galima sumažinti. Katalikiškieji modernistai žmogų laikė dvasine būtybe, kuri realizuoja save kūrybiniais aktais: pati gamyba yra žmogiškosios dvasios aktas. Darbe realizuojama žmogaus dvasios kokybė, kuri nulemianti ir gamybos pobūdį, todėl ūkinis, materialinis gyvenimas turi būti pajungtas aukščiausiems gyvenimo tikslams, o žmogaus dvasia neturėtų jam vergauti. Aptariamas prekių naikinimas kapitalistinės gamybos sąlygomis. Katalikiškieji modernistai išnaudojimą suprato ne kaip klasinių santykių, o kaip žmogiškojo egoizmo, kiekio gausinimo rezultatą. Technikos pasiekimų panaudojimas gamyboje skatina dar didesnį darbininko asmenybės pavergimą. Jie teisingai nurodė, kad pelno gamyba lemia asmenybės dehumanizavimą.

Financial Innovation and the Distinction between Financial and Industrial Capital

Financial innovations and concomitant changes in the focus of activity of nonfinancial corporations are blurring the distinctions between financial and nonfinancial capital. Karl Marx, Thorstein Veblen, and John Maynard Keynes all considered the distinction between financial and analytically significant, and the distinction was centrally incorporated in their mature works. Marx distinguished between money capital and industrial capital throughout Capital; Veblen spoke of the different interests and roles of captains of finance and captains of industry in The Engineers and the Price System; and Keynes differentiated between both speculation and enterprise and rentiers and entrepreneurs in The General Theory. ' For Marx and economists in the Marxist tradition the distinction is important for two reasons. First, from the perspective of the labor theory of value, only workers employed productively in producing goods and services under the control of capitalists produce surplus value; profit and interest are seen as competing claims on this surplus value. To the extent that the share of the total social in the cir

The Value-Creating Capacity of Skilled Labor in Marxian Economics

According to the most widely accepted explanation of the increased value-creating capacity of skilled labor in Marxian economics, an expenditure of skilled labor represents a simultaneous expenditure of both the worker's present simple labor and apro rata share of all past labor spent on and by the worker acquiring the skill. First popularized by Hilferding, this solution to the so-called "reduction problem" has been elaborated and reaffirmed in recent years by several theorists. In assessing the validity of the Hilferding accounting procedure, though, little attention has been paid to the question of how the procedure interacts with Marx's theory of the value of labor-power to explain the production of surplus-value. An analysis of that issue reveals that the Hilferding approach is fatally flawed. It contradicts both Marx's explanation of the origin of surplus value and common sense, and it causes more theoretical problems for the labor theory of value than it solves. More generally, an analysis of the source of the theoretical difficulties encountered by the Hilferding procedure suggests that there may be no solution to the reduction problem which is simultaneously consistent with both Marx's theory of the value of labor-power and his general theory of value. That is, the reduction problem may be insoluble within the framework of Marx's version of the labor theory of value.

Dependency Theory, Imperialism, and the Production of Surplus Value On a World Scale

Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Enzo Faletto (1979: xxiii) have announced what has long been suspected, i.e., that dependency theory is no more. This should give rise to few regrets. Its well known emphasis upon relations among nations rather than among classes (cf. Roxborourgh,, 1979: 46) and its characteristic definition of modes of production in terms of circulation (Laclau, 1977: 15-50) marked it as a theory which sought to understand the dynamics of capitalism without a grasp of its basic organizational units. However, the demise of dependency theory has left a vacuum in the theory of the international capitalist system, for the turn to local class relations does not provide an alternative to the general systematics of the dependency school. Neither does the classical theory of imperialism fill the gap. On the contrary, both the theory of imperialism and dependency theory are strongly circulationist in character, and neither can come to terms with transformations in the system of division of labor. We will provide an alternative based on the global organization of the production of surplus value, attempting to periodize the international capitalist system in terms of internal contradictions in systems of production (in both core and periphery) giving rise to transformations in the structure of production in both areas in a complementary fashion involving the articulation of modes of production on a global scale. What follows will attempt to provide a framework for an analysis based on contradictions within complex, unevenly developed systems of production of surplus value as well as to indicate some of the fundamental issues giving rise to the theories of dependency (especially in the Brazilian case) and imperialism as perspectives incapable of realizing in thought the changing forms of capitalist production and accumulation on a world scale.

Capitalist Exploitation and Black Labor: Some Conceptual Issues

The preceding discussion sets up, on a systematic theoretical basis, the precise analytical meaning of the concept of exploitation. This concept is shown to have meaning with reference to the process of production of surplus value and its appropriation as profits, interest, rent, taxes, etc. within a system of capitalist relations based on free exchange of commodities, including labor power, and dominance of capital over property and production. Exploitation is located within the sphere of the use of labor-power in production and in the context of the capital-labor relation as a specific form of class relation peculiar to capitalism. It is shown to be consistent with market relations of free exchange.

The Health Care Industry in Advanced Capitalism

This paper analyzes the nature of the health care industry and its role within the capitalist system. By developing an understanding of this relation ship, we should be able to understand more fully the internal dynamics of the health care system and to develop mutually supportive movements for change within and outside it. The form and dynamics of the health care system are grounded in class struggle. The transformation of health care into a commodity, and the production of surplus value in the health care industry, are central fea tures of contemporary health care organization. The health care industry performs four interrelated economic functions: accumulation, provision of investment opportunities, absorption of surplus labor, and maintenance of the labor force. It also has important ideological functions of systemic legitimation, social control, and reproduction of the capitalist class structure.

A Reply to Muller and Neususs

Abstract Even in liberal capitalism the market did not alone take on the functions of socializing in the sense of social integration. The class relationship could assume the unpolitical form of the relation of wage labor and capital only under the condition that the general prerequisites for the continued existence of capitalist production were fulfilled by the state. Only state functions which supplement, but are not subject to the market mechanism make possible unpolitical domination exercised through private appropriation of socially produced surplus value. Capital formation takes place in the medium of the (at first) unlimited competition of individual capitals. The supporting conditions of this competition, or the social foundations of the production of surplus value, cannot, however, themselves be reproduced with capitalist means.

Exploitation in Migrant Labour Camps

As is well known, a major thesis of Marx's Catital is that the capitalist exploits workers by paying them a wage which only sustains them, while at the same time extracting surplus value from their endeavours. In developing this idea, Marx outlined numerous instances of exploitation, not only in terms of wages, but in repect to working conditions. As members of the working class have formed unions and improved their economic situation, it is difficult for the social scientist ofthe I970S to fully comprehend the character of economic relations of the I850Sa period which seems to some almost as distant as the Middle Ages and with institutions as anachronistic. The behaviour andattitudes ofthe capitalists of the nineteenth-century seem characteristic of an alien and unenlightened period, but one which is past. Yet, in the I970S in modern industrial societies, there remain vestiges of the exploitation of workers, an exploitation which is similar to that so vividly described by Marx. An examination of these instances provides a greater understanding of the character of exploitation. It is the purpose of this paper to examine one such instance an instance which occurs paradoxically in a wealthy and democratic society, many of whose members believe that exploitation occurs elsewhere but not in their own society. That instance is exploitation in migrant farm labour camps in the United States.l After describing life in labour camps, we will attempt to shed some further light on the nature of exploitation as a recurring social phenomenon. In this paper, exploitation will be used in two ways: (I) the payment of subsistence wages by a capitalist to workers who in turn produce surplus value for the capitalist, and (2) the 'use' of one worker by another for the second worker's personal gain. We will describe some of the speciSc mechanisms whereby farm owners, or their representa-

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

The Dialectic of the Nature-Society-System

There are four logical possibilities for conceiving the relationship of nature and society: the reduction of society to nature, the projection of nature into society, dualism, and a nature-society-dialectic. This differentiation results in four different approaches. Nature is a self-organizing system that produces an evolutionary hierarchy of interconnected systems with specific qualities. Society is a product of nature where humans produce and reproduce structures that enable and constrain human practices in dynamic processes. Parts of nature are observed and appropriated by humans from within society, these parts are socially constructed and form a subsystem of society. The self-organization cycle of nature and the self-organization cycle of the socio-sphere are mutually connected in a productive cycle of society where natural self-organization serves as the material foundation that enables and constrains social self-organization and human production processes transform natural structures and incorporate these very structures into society as means of production (technologies, raw materials). The economy is that part of the socio-sphere where the relationship between nature and the socio-sphere is established, the mediation is achieved by human labour processes. Nature enters the economic process as material input in the form of means of production (constant capital): machines, raw materials, auxiliary materials. Organized nature that is part of the production process in the form of technology increases the productivity of labour and hence reduces the costs of variable capital (total amount of wages) and increases the speed of the production of surplus value. The production system of modern society is oriented on economic profit and productivity, ecological depletion and pollution are by-products of modernization. The Fordist production model that originated in the West and was copied by the Soviet Union is one of the major causes of the global ecological crisis. The productive forces are in modern society socially and ecologically destructive forces. In late capitalism there is a tendency of commodification and privatization of nature and human knowledge. Especially in the later writings of Marx and Engels one can find formulations that suggest a productivist logic that sees nature as an enemy opposed to man, as a resource and object that must be mastered, exploited, and controlled. But throughout the works of Marx and Engels one can find many passages where they argue that there is an antagonism between capitalism and nature that results in ecological degradation and that a free society is also based on alternative, sustainable relationships between man and nature. The idea of an alternative society-nature-relationship and of nature conservation can already be found in the works of Marx and Engels, they are precursors of ecological thinking. In Orthodox Marxism dialectical thinking has been interpreted as deterministic and mechanic laws and misused for arguing that the Soviet system is a free society. An alternative is a dialectic that stresses human practice and that structures condition alternative possibilities for action. Dialectic thinkers like Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch have argued that nature is a producing subject, a non-teleological subject (Marcuse). Describing nature as a subject implies that if man destroys nature the latter as a producing subject will probably produce uncontrollable negative effects on society and that hence nature should be appropriated in sustainable ways. Matter is a natural subject that acts upon itself, whereas man is a human self-conscious subject that acts upon nature and society.

The Dialectic of the Nature-Society-System

There are four logical possibilities for conceiving the relationship of nature and society: the reduction of society to nature, the projection of nature into society, dualism, and a nature-society-dialectic. This differentiation results in four different approaches. Nature is a self-organizing system that produces an evolutionary hierarchy of interconnected systems with specific qualities. Society is a product of nature where humans produce and reproduce structures that enable and constrain human practices in dynamic processes. Parts of nature are observed and appropriated by humans from within society, these parts are socially constructed and form a subsystem of society. The self-organization cycle of nature and the self-organization cycle of the socio-sphere are mutually connected in a productive cycle of society where natural self-organization serves as the material foundation that enables and constrains social self-organization and human production processes transform natural structures and incorporate these very structures into society as means of production (technologies, raw materials). The economy is that part of the socio-sphere where the relationship between nature and the socio-sphere is established, the mediation is achieved by human labour processes. Nature enters the economic process as material input in the form of means of production (constant capital): machines, raw materials, auxiliary materials. Organized nature that is part of the production process in the form of technology increases the productivity of labour and hence reduces the costs of variable capital (total amount of wages) and increases the speed of the production of surplus value. The production system of modern society is oriented on economic profit and productivity, ecological depletion and pollution are by-products of modernization. The Fordist production model that originated in the West and was copied by the Soviet Union is one of the major causes of the global ecological crisis. The productive forces are in modern society socially and ecologically destructive forces. In late capitalism there is a tendency of commodification and privatization of nature and human knowledge. Especially in the later writings of Marx and Engels one can find formulations that suggest a productivist logic that sees nature as an enemy opposed to man, as a resource and object that must be mastered, exploited, and controlled. But throughout the works of Marx and Engels one can find many passages where they argue that there is an antagonism between capitalism and nature that results in ecological degradation and that a free society is also based on alternative, sustainable relationships between man and nature. The idea of an alternative society-nature-relationship and of nature conservation can already be found in the works of Marx and Engels, they are precursors of ecological thinking. In Orthodox Marxism dialectical thinking has been interpreted as deterministic and mechanic laws and misused for arguing that the Soviet system is a free society. An alternative is a dialectic that stresses human practice and that structures condition alternative possibilities for action. Dialectic thinkers like Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch have argued that nature is a producing subject, a non-teleological subject (Marcuse). Describing nature as a subject implies that if man destroys nature the latter as a producing subject will probably produce uncontrollable negative effects on society and that hence nature should be appropriated in sustainable ways. Matter is a natural subject that acts upon itself, whereas man is a human self-conscious subject that acts upon nature and society.

The two forms of the circulation of comodities and the production of surplus-value (The Econmics of Forest Industry-Part 1. The analysis of the productive process-the 3rd course)

The two forms of the circulation of comodities and the production of surplus-value (The Econmics of Forest Industry-Part 1. The analysis of the productive process-the 3rd course)