1st Edition
Marxist Political Economy Essays in Retrieval: Selected Works of Geoff Pilling
Geoff Pilling’s work shows that Marxist theory is relevant to those struggling to understand the problems of capitalist society today, and that the work not only of Marx and Engels but that of later Marxist theorists, including Lenin is worth studying. It also shows that to understand the problems of today’s society needs more than narrow specialist economic analysis, but a deep awareness of current developments in society.
Introduction Ben Fine 1. Recollections: Personal and academic reflections on Geoff Pilling and his work 2. Globalisation’ and the British Working Class: an Essay in Economic Analysis and Political Prognosis’ 3. The Law of Value in Ricardo and Marx 4. Imperialism, Trade and ‘Unequal Exchange’: The Work of Aghiri Emmanuel 5. A ‘Third Industrial Revolution’? Marxism and the Productive Forces 6. The Foundation of Keynes’ Economics 7. On Disinterring Karl Marx 8. A Very Peculiar Capitalism. Some Reflections on ‘the Decline of Britain’ 9. Engels and the Industrial Revolution
Biography
Geoff Pilling was a prominent political economist who devoted his life to the achievement of socialism and a ‘truly human society’. Geoff taught Economics at Sheffield and Bradford Universities and at Middlesex Polytechnic (later University), where he developed an MA in Political Economy and was awarded a readership. In addition to a distinguished academic career, in which he published several books, he was a prolific writer in the left-wing press, including Labour Review, Fourth International, Workers’ Press and the Dockers Charter. He sadly died in 1997.
Doria Pilling was Geoff's wife and is an Honorary Senior Fellow at the School of Health Sciences at City University, London, UK.
"Capitalism’s latest global crisis and slump have made Geoff Pilling’s work newly relevant. His essays on value and crisis, and on Marx vs. Keynes and Marx vs. Sraffa, that are brought together here are especially timely. Keith Gibbard’s intellectual biography of the author, which introduces the volume, is lucid and masterful. One of the foremost contributors to the revival of the Marxian critique of political economy a generation ago, Pilling carried forward a tradition that did not divide theory from practice or economics from philosophy. And his precise, accurate scholarship remains a model; he understood well that one must get Marx right before judging whether Marx got it right. As someone who learned a lot from him, I highly recommend this book." - Andrew Kliman, author of Reclaiming Marx’s "Capital": A refutation of the myth of inconsistency and professor of economics at Pace University, USA
