Relative Surplus Research Articles

‘Latent’ surplus populations and colonial histories of drought, groundnuts, and finance in Senegal

Amidst growing concern about the displacement of rural populations exposed to climate change, new financial instruments are increasingly being presented as key tools for the management of climate risks. Index-based agricultural insurance (IBAI) is a particularly key example. Recent critical work has pointed to the deeply neoliberal character of IBAI and like interventions. However, the promotion of new financial instruments in response to crises of agrarian production has a much longer history in Africa and elsewhere. This article draws on Marx’s concept of ‘latent’ surplus populations to trace out and explain parallels between IBAI and colonial interventions in Senegal’s groundnut basin. Approaching the question in this way, the article highlights the long-run historical co-production and interdependence of the Senegalese state and a political ecology of groundnut production in which relations of indebtedness and the exposure to variable rainfall of a fragile relative surplus population has often been crucial to the mobilization of cheap labour for groundnut production. IBAI is thus positioned as part of a recurrent trajectory of emergency financial interventions aimed at smoothing out the contradictions implicit in this socio-ecological configuration.

Nutrient Variation Characteristics of Luanhekou - Beidaihe Ecological Monitoring Marine Area in summer

Based on the observation data and materials of Luanhekou - Beidaihe ecological monitoring marine area obtained during 1999 and 2014 in summer, the nutrient and its structure change were studied. The results showed that: with social and economic development in the coastal regional, compounds with three nitrogen atoms increased, but phosphate and silicate decreased in the past 16 years. Average N: P ratio increased from 4.951 in 1999 to 47.188 in 2014, while Si: N ratio decreased. Nutrient structure changed obviously. Phosphate was relative surplus but inorganic nitrogen was relative lack before 2004. However, the water quality characteristics turn into high nitrogen and low phosphorus after 2004.

Precarization, Informalization, and Marx

It is argued that informalization (used primarily to understand economic dynamics in the Global South) and precarization (used primarily in the analysis of the labor market in the Global North) are in the process of becoming identical phenomena and are both related to the expansion of the reserve army of labor. Insights from Marx are useful in understand both processes, especially his concepts of the value of labor, of formal subsumption vs. real subsumption, and of absolute vs. relative surplus value. The vast expansion and globalization of the labor force has fostered the trend toward a reversion to formal subsumption and facilitated the recommodification of labor.

Bringing in the ‘neoliberal model of development’

This article brings in the concept of the ‘neoliberal model of development’ as a corrective to the prevailing emphasis in the literature that usefully describes neoliberalism as a nationally diverging phenomenon but does not adequately examine the mid-range trans-national/global regulatory connection or the logics of national convergence. By extending the concept of regulation and specifying the national trans-national connection, this article revises the original Parisian French Regulation School conception of a ‘model of development’ and makes it applicable to the contemporary neoliberal era. It then applies this revised conception to help explain contemporary patterns of national convergence and divergence. In particular, with reference to Marx’s theory of the ‘relative surplus population’, this article explores capitalism’s uneven development as a form of national variation intensified by the neoliberal model of development. This revisionist analysis of model of development also demonstrates how its praxis dimension is significant for explaining past and present mid-range variations of capitalism, and more importantly for making a mid-range counter-hegemonic future.

Interpretation of the concept of “discount” in Technical Works Tenders

Abstract The text deals with the concept of the discount submitted by a candidate contractor tendering for a public works project. In accordance with prevailing conceptions, the quantity of the discount is perceived as being the amount of monetary compensation the candidate building contractor is willing to forgo for the sake of emerging as the winner of the tender. The text argues on the contrary that the discount is an objectively measurable magnitude. Specifically it is equal to the algebraic difference of the absolute surplus value that could be appropriated by the public works contractor minus the quantity of relative surplus value by virtue of which he is able to recoup the amount of discount submitted in the tender.

Spatial mismatch, education and language skills in the Brussels metropolis: an analysis

Spatial mismatch, where job seekers do not live where jobs can be found, can be an important barrier on the labour market, especially for vulnerable groups. In this study we look at the role that spatial mismatch plays in the Brussels metropolis. Using an improved benchmark, the distance-weighted spatial mismatch index, that also considers location-driven mismatch, we compare the spatial mismatch between the high- and low-skilled labour market and the labour market for the low-skilled with and without language skills. In the largest possible definition of the Brussels metropolis, results show a spatial mismatch of up to 50 % larger for the low-skilled, in comparison with the high-skilled. For the low-skilled without language skills, the spatial mismatch is 115 % higher than for the low-skilled with language skills. This difference is mainly due to a relative surplus of low-skilled job seekers (without language skills) in the Brussels-Capital Region and a relative shortage in the first belt of municipalities around the Region.

Consumer Finance and Labor Exploitation

Lending to the working class is increasingly becoming an essential feature in modern capitalism. Marxist theory, however, does not possess an adequate account of this phenomenon, particularly its effect on labor exploitation. This paper seeks to show how Marxist economic theory could understand and account for this form of finance. It finds that lending to the working class enables increases in both absolute and relative surplus value. JEL Classification: B51, G21, J50

A Theory of Value, Profits and Economic Crises

This article starts with definitions of value and profit and constructs a new interpretation of the economic crisis. Exchange of goods stems from different people's different judgments on the value of goods, and twice exchanges of goods lead to commercial profits. Production profit is essentially the same as commercial profit. It also requires twice exchanges. The capitalists buy labors from the workers and sell the products to the workers. The difference in the prices of the labors and products constitutes the profit. The capitalists get the profit but the workers do not share the profit. Such profit distribution leads to the fact that the new products sale cannot be sustained within a closed economy, resulting in an economic crisis, manifested as a relative surplus of product. This article focuses on the field of circulation and exposes the exploitation of workers by the two exchanges, providing a theoretical approach to understand the rich-poor divergence.

The employment contract with externalised costs: the avatars of Marxian exploitation

The paper pursues two aims. The first is to argue that the foundation of Marx’s theory of capitalist exploitation is to be found, not in the labour theory of value, but rather in the contract of employment, the legal frame of the capital-labour relation. The second is to suggest that the partial externalisation of the reproduction cost of labour power has been an important source of relative surplus value, along with the productivity increase, emphasised by Marx, in the industries supplying wage goods.

Innovative Approach to Measuring the Impact of FDI on Some Macroeconomic Indicators in B&H

SUMMARY The necessity of economic life and economic development of every economy is the free movement of capital. The international movement of capital has its balance of payment when capital export represents economic surplus in relation to consumption of the national economy and the import of capital represents an increase of consumption in regard to the output of a national economy. Analysis of the influence of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth of the host country, among other things, is emphasized in the function of the achieved phase of its economic development. Taking all this into consideration, the aim of this paper refers to an attempt to indicate the significance and the role of FDI as well as the importance of attracting foreign direct investment in B&H and the determination of the effects of FDI on the economy of B&H. In this regard, we will try to determine the level of FDI’s impact on some macroeconomic indicators in B&H (GDP, import, export, unemployment) by using contemporary SPSS statistical analysis program (model) and applying the methods (calculating coefficients) of correlation and regression analysis. In other words, we will determine the analytical expression used to describe a statistical relationship of these macroeconomic categories.

A note on Stokes’ problem in dense granular media using the -rheology

The classical Stokes’ problem describing the fluid motion due to a steadily moving infinite wall is revisited in the context of dense granular flows of mono-dispersed beads using the recently proposed$\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(I)$-rheology. In Newtonian fluids, molecular diffusion brings about a self-similar velocity profile and the boundary layer in which the fluid motion takes place increases indefinitely with time$t$as$\sqrt{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}t}$, where$\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$is the kinematic viscosity. For a dense granular viscoplastic liquid, it is shown that the local shear stress, when properly rescaled, exhibits self-similar behaviour at short time scales and it then rapidly evolves towards a steady-state solution. The resulting shear layer increases in thickness as$\sqrt{\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}_{g}t}$analogous to a Newtonian fluid where$\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}_{g}$is an equivalent granular kinematic viscosity depending not only on the intrinsic properties of the granular medium, such as grain diameter$d$, density$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}$and friction coefficients, but also on the applied pressure$p_{w}$at the moving wall and the solid fraction$\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}$(constant). In addition, the$\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(I)$-rheology indicates that this growth continues until reaching the steady-state boundary layer thickness$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{s}=\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{w}(p_{w}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}g)$, independent of the grain size, at approximately a finite time proportional to$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{w}^{2}(p_{w}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}gd)^{3/2}\sqrt{d/g}$, where$g$is the acceleration due to gravity and$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{w}=(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{s})/\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{s}$is the relative surplus of the steady-state wall shear stress$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w}$over the critical wall shear stress$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{s}$(yield stress) that is needed to bring the granular medium into motion. For the case of Stokes’ first problem when the wall shear stress$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w}$is imposed externally, the$\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(I)$-rheology suggests that the wall velocity simply grows as$\sqrt{t}$before saturating to a constant value whereby the internal resistance of the granular medium balances out the applied stresses. In contrast, for the case with an externally imposed wall speed$u_{w}$, the dense granular medium near the wall initially maintains a shear stress very close to$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{d}$which is the maximum internal resistance via grain–grain contact friction within the context of the$\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(I)$-rheology. Then the wall shear stress$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w}$decreases as$1/\sqrt{t}$until ultimately saturating to a constant value so that it gives precisely the same steady-state solution as for the imposed shear-stress case. Thereby, the steady-state wall velocity, wall shear stress and the applied wall pressure are related as$u_{w}\sim (g\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{s}^{2}/\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}_{g})f(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{w})$where$f(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}_{w})$is either$O(1)$if$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w}\sim \unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{s}$or logarithmically large as$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{w}$approaches$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}_{d}$.

Cambios y permanencias en el mundo del trabajo: un abordaje desde la economía política crítica al caso de la Gran Minería de Oro en Colombia

Resumen Los desarrollos categoriales e históricos desglosados en este artículo auxilian el análisis de los cambios y permanencias de la explotación de la fuerza de trabajo, haciendo énfasis en el patrón exportador de especialización productiva, a través del cual el negocio de la Gran Minería de Oro en Colombia encuentra nichos de reproducción del capital privado intensificando formas de explotación tanto de la naturaleza como de la mano de obra. El alcance del artículo es contextualizar y comprender la descalificación y profundización de la explotación de la fuerza de trabajo que reproduce, en el siglo XXI, modos de apropiación privada de bienes finitos de naturaleza colectiva. Para tal propósito, se desglosan en perspectiva socio-histórica algunas categorías desde el campo de la economía política crítica propuestas por Marx, tales como: valor de cambio y valor de uso, trabajo necesario y trabajo excedente, plusvalía absoluta y plusvalía relativa, así mismo, se hace una breve caracterización de los patrones de reproducción del capital que han emergido en América Latina entre los años de 1930 y 2016.

The value components of contract farming in contemporary capitalism

AbstractContract farming (CF) has generally been understood as, essentially, a market institution—by both (approving) “mainstream” and (critical) “radical” perspectives. Analyses of relations of production have, meanwhile, tended towards a problematic “peasantist” frame, where contracts undermine farmer “autonomy” in processes of “flexible” corporate agro‐industrial restructuring. This paper argues that a materialist analysis of CF from within capital–labour relations offers a stronger conceptual foundation for re‐synthesizing questions of market‐power. It first argues that radical notions of “peasant subsumation” conceptually mirror Marx's “formal subsumption of capital” but underplay dynamics of “real subsumption” accompanying capitalism's wider development. Drawing on the “petty commodity production” concept, it then argues that CF's “flexibility” rests in its differential content. CF's fungibility to contradictory movements of “integration” and “dispersion” enables it to emphasize different methods of surplus appropriation under shifting conditions; each corresponding to a different dominant social tendency. On the one hand, conditions of market expansion inspire integration for relative surplus appropriation through raised productivity, and CF tends to act as a “tool of proletarianization” in the wider centralization of capital. On the other, conditions of contraction motivate the dispersal of unvalorized capital, prompting efforts to raise absolute surplus appropriation, and CF tends to act as a “tool of differentiation” to concentrate agricultural capital.

Rural Labour Market and Farmers Under MGNREGA in Rajasthan

This paper analyses changes in labour market in rural Rajasthan after the introduction of MGNREGA in April 2006. The study attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How does MGNREGA influence rural labour market? (2) Which segment of the labour force seeks job under MGNREGA? (3) What are the MGNREGA-induced changes in agriculture and allied sectors? Marx’s concept of relative surplus population is used to analyse different categories of labours participated in MGNREGA. The study is based on a sample survey of 400 rural households randomly selected from four districts in Rajasthan. The study found that there was a substantial fall in the amount spent per rural household under MGNREGA in Rajasthan since 2011–2012. Moreover, MGNREGA has not been effective in attracting crisis-ridden farmers and farm labours because of its irregular employment and a lower daily wage rate as compared to spot wage. Rural labours, whose reservation wage is less than or equal to wage rate in MGNREGA, do supply labour to the Scheme, and a major share of the workforce in MGNREGA has never been part of the labour market nor do they intend to participate outside MGNREGA. It was found that large and medium farmers wanted to stop MGNREGA in agriculturally prosperous districts. Conversely, in agriculturally less developed districts in Rajasthan, large farmers did not hold MGNREGA responsible for labour shortage and wage hike in the farm sector.

Creating Surplus Labour: Neo-Liberal Transformations and the Development of Relative Surplus Population in Indonesia

ABSTRACTMany among the world’s population are surplus to the requirements of capital accumulation. These are people who become engaged in precarious employment both in rural and urban contexts and those who are involuntarily unemployed. Their presence has been particularly acute in “peripheral countries.” Mainstream economic literature explains this in terms of the dual labour market, where it is argued that surplus labour will eventually disappear with market-led economic development. Contrary to this explanation, this article argues, using Marx’s concept of relative surplus population (RSP), that under the existing neo-liberal framework such labour vulnerability is continually being created. This article charts the developmental history of Indonesia and demonstrates that the growth of RSP is an outcome of a neo-liberal transformation which favours capital accumulation at the service of global markets. Neo-liberal adjustments shape the development of RSP in three related ways. First, the adjustments change class relations and transform state orientation. Second, the reconfiguration of class dynamics and the state shapes the model of accumulation. Third, the model of accumulation eventually affects the size of RSP. It is argued that the disconnection between the domestic agricultural development and industrialisation has contributed to the maintenance of a large RSP in Indonesia.

Research the impact of FDI on some macroeconomic indicators in Bosnia and Herzegovina by using of program IBM SPSS statistics

It is known that the economic stability and economic development of each economy depends on the free movement of capital. The international movement of capital has its balance of payment when capital export represents economic surplus in relation to consumption of the national economy and the import of capital represents an increase of consumption in regard to the output of a national economy. The paper is analyzed of the influence of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth of the host country, among other things, is emphasized in the function of the achieved phase of its economic development. The aim of this paper refers to an attempt to indicate the significance and the role of FDI as well as the importance of attracting foreign direct investment in B&H and the determination of the effects of FDI on the economy of B&H. We will try to prove it, i.e. to determine the degree of impact of FDI on some macroeconomic indicators in B&H (GDP, import, export, unemployment) by using IBM SPSS v.22 statistical analysis program (model) and applying the methods, calculating coefficients of correlation and regression analysis. In other words, we will determine the analytical expression used to describe a statistical relationship of these macroeconomic categories.

A Dynamic Theory of Secession

This paper builds a dynamic theory of secessions, conflictual or peaceful, analyzing the forward looking interaction between groups in a country. The proposed framework allows us to jointly address several key stylized facts on secession, and generates several novel predictions. We find that if a group out of power is small enough, then the group in power can always maintain peace with an acceptable offer of surplus sharing for every period, while when there is a mismatch between the relative size and the relative surplus contribution of the minority group, conflict followed by secession can occur. Accepted peaceful secession is predicted for large groups of similar prosperity, and higher patience is associated to a higher chance of secession. We formulate as a result a number of policy recommendations on various dimensions of federalism and other institutions.

Forever young? Marx’s Critique of political economy after 200 years

This article suggests a reconstruction of Marx’s Critique of political economy as a macro-monetary theory of capitalist production. The first part of what follows will provide a sort of methodological introduction to Das Kapital. I am questioning the meaning of critique versus criticism, the distinction between fetish-character and fetishism, the role of dialectics, and the difference between reading, interpreting and reconstructing. I will focus especially on volume I. At the centre of the discussion are: the multiple meanings of abstract labour and socialization, the role of money as a commodity for the labour theory of value, the ‘method of comparison’ in grounding valorisation (the emergence of gross profits) as the constitution of capital from class struggle in production, the unity of absolute and relative surplus value extraction, the key notion of Technologie in the real subsumption of labour to capital, the law of the tendential fall in relative wage, Marx’s two notions of competition, and the macro-monetary class perspective in capitalist reproduction crucial to Capital, volume I. Some considerations are devoted to the transformation problem, the so-called “New Interpretation”, and crisis theory. JEL codes : B14, B24, B51 Keywords : Marx, value, money, crisis, macro-monetary theory of capitalist production

From ‘Relative Surplus Population’ and ‘Dual Labour Markets’ to ‘Informal’ and ‘Formal’ Employment and Enterprises: Insights About Causation and Consequences

This essay traces the intellectual history of the concepts ‘informal’ sector and ‘informal economy’ from Karl Marx to Arthur Lewis, Barry Bluestone, Keith Hart and S. V. Sethuraman.* It shows how the Marxian dynamics of ‘relative surplus population’ has been replaced by the concept of ‘informal economy’. It also discusses the dynamic role of population pressure on agriculture in many countries of the Global South. Finally, it is suggested that the strategies advocated by the International Labour Organization (ILO) since the 1970s have tended to narrow the areas of investigation promoted by them.

In-itself for-itself: Towards second-generation neo-Marxist class theory

First-generation neo-Marxist class theorists advanced some way beyond the orthodox Marxist account that is grounded in a particular reading of the Communist Manifesto. However, capitalism’s changing reality since then has revealed the limited extent of their break with orthodoxy. With the support of Bhaskar’s critical realism and Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, this article addresses these limitations to facilitate movement towards second-generation neo-Marxist class theory. Rather than following first-generation neo-Marxist Poulantzas who dismissed the ‘class-in-itself’/‘class-for-itself’ distinction as a non-Marxist Hegelian residue, this article treats it as the central problematic of Marx’s class theory. Bourdieu’s subjectivist reformulations of the distinction that resonates with Marxist interpretations that run counter to the neo-Marxist social scientific aspiration are also critically engaged. The innovative conceptual framework arising from the article’s critical engagement with these diverging intellectual trajectories is applied to sketch ‘class effects’ in-themselves especially around the theme of the ‘relative surplus population’. Expected class effects implied by the core dynamic of the capitalist mode of production, and then contemporary empirical effects generated by neoliberal-led global capitalism, are outlined. This re-conceptualisation is then supplemented by critically examining Beck’s argument that individualisation leads to capitalism without classes-for-themselves. The article concludes by reconsidering class-for-itself in the light of the preceding discussion.