1st Edition
Value, Money and Capital The Critique of Political Economy and Contemporary Capitalism
The book presents a high-impact re-reading of core topics in the Marx and Marxist debates including: value theory, the commodity nature of money, complex or skilled labour, the determination of the value of labour-power and the nature of extraordinary surplus-value. Drawing on this literature, the book provides original and innovative insights into key controversies in contemporary capitalism such as the increasingly intellectual character of commodity-producing labour, the emergence of global value chains, the relevance of ground-rent bearing commodities, and the specific, uneven developmental dynamics of "resource-rich" countries in the global process of capital accumulation.
Contributing to the renewed vitality of critical studies of the economic works of Karl Marx, this book will be essential reading for all those interested in contemporary debates within Marxism, as well as readers of political economy, economics, development studies and economic sociology.
Introduction
CHAPTER 1. The determinations of value as historically-specific social form. Part I: Materiality and social form of abstract labour
Introduction
‘Rubin’s dilemma’ and the Marxist debate on abstract labour
Situating the contemporary literature on abstract labour
The Wertkritik’s idiosyncratic solution to ‘Rubin’s dilemma’
Abstract labour and value in chapter 1 of Capital
The initial unearthing of abstract labour and value through the analysis of the commodity
From the analysis of the dual character of labour to the synthetic unfolding of the content and form of the value-determinations
CHAPTER 2. The determinations of value as historically-specific social form. Part II: production and circulation
Introduction
The contemporary ‘circulationist’ (over)reaction to the naturalistic reading of Capital: the case of Michael Heinrich
The immanent social character of human labour and its private form
Critical remarks on some current attempts to overcome the pitfalls of the circulationist value-form approach
Contemporary production-centred approaches to value as a historically-specific social form
Co-constitutive value-form theory
Conclusion
Appendix. Brief remarks on the magnitude of value
CHAPTER 3. Systematic and historical modes of explanation in the critique of political economy. A methodological contribution to the controversy over the commodity nature of money
Introduction
Lapavitsas and Ingham on the nature of money
The methodological limits of the explanations put forward in the debate
The contemporary reality of money
The historical genesis of money
Conclusion
CHAPTER 4. Skilled labour and value-production. An alternative approach to a longstanding and unresolved controversy in the critique of political economy
Introduction
Marx on skilled labour
The critiques of Marx’s perspective on the ‘reduction problem’ and the response of Marxists
The critique of the Marxian solution
The ‘rise and fall’ of the classic Hilferding–Bauer response
The more recent proliferation of novel solutions to the ‘reduction problem’
Critical assessment of the complex labour debate
The determination of complex labour in value-production
Conclusion
CHAPTER 5. Rethinking the determination of the value of labour-power
Introduction
The ‘received wisdom’ and its limits
Marx’s discussion of the most general determinations of the value of labour-power in Capital: a critical reading.
Rethinking Marx’s account of the determinations of the value of labour-power
The real subsumption of working class consumption to capital
Content and form of the determination of the value of labour-power: on the role of the class struggle
A brief illustration
Conclusion
CHAPTER 6. Extra surplus value from innovation and the Marxian critique of political economy
Introduction
The debate over extra surplus value as subsidiary to other Marxist controversies
The main arguments in the debate
The ‘potentiated labour’ thesis
The ‘value transfer’ thesis
Marx on the source of extra surplus value
Substance, source and form of extra surplus value
Conclusion
CHAPTER 7. Cognitive commodities and the growing role of intellectual labour in value-production
Introduction
The ‘applicability’ of the law of value to knowledge-intensive commodities according to ‘Cognitive Capitalism’ theorists and Marxist economists
Material specificity and value of knowledge-intensive commodities
Cognitive means of production and the formation of value
The economic content and juridical form of cognitive commodities
Conclusion
CHAPTER 8. A critical look at Global Value Chains: competition and globalisation in contemporary capitalism. The case of the automotive industry
Introduction
The qualitative differentiation of individual capitals as the content of the ‘chain’ form of capitalist competition
The changing organisational forms of capitalist competition and the recent configurations of GVCs
GVCs and the international fragmentation of the subjective productivity of the working class.
The global automotive industry in light of the organisational and spatial reconfigurations of GVCs
CHAPTER 9. The debate over the determinations of ground-rent and the implications for the comprehension of the exchange of agrarian and mining commodities on the world market
Introduction
Controversies over ground-rent and its source
The controversy around differential rent II
Controversies over absolute monopoly rent
Further issues in the investigation of the peculiarities of the primary sector: the problem of the ‘personification of economic categories’
Some implications for the analysis of contemporary capitalism
CHAPTER 10. The specificity of capital accumulation in Latin America. A critique of dependency theory
Introduction
Ruy Mauro Marini’s and Enrique Dussel’s attempts to marry dependency theory and the Marxian critique of political economy
Ruy Mauro Marini’s Dialectics of Dependency
Unequal exchange as the essential ground of Latin America’s dependency in Dussel’s Towards an Unknown Marx
The weaknesses of Marxist dependency theory
The accumulation of capital on a world scale, the international division of labour and the hierarchical stratification of the interstate system: general foundations of uneven development
The immanent unity between economic content and political form of the specificity of Latin American societies
Biography
Guido Starosta is a Professor in the History of Economic Thought at the National University of Quilmes (UNQ) and a member of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and of the Centre for Science as Practical Criticism (CICP), in Argentina. His research interests are in the critique of political economy and political economy of development. He is currently investigating economic and political forms of the accumulation of capital in Argentina. He also works on issues of method and subjectivity in the Marxian critique of political economy.
Gastón Caligaris is a Lecturer in the History of Economic Thought at the National University of Quilmes (UNQ) and a member of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and of the Centre for Science as Practical Criticism (CICP), in Argentina. His research interests are in agrarian production and the relationship between economy and politics in contemporary Argentine society. Other research interests include dialectical method and value theory in the Marxian critique of political economy.
Alejandro Fitzsimons is a Lecturer in Argentine Economic History at the National University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and a member of the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) and of the Centre for Science as Practical Criticism (CICP), in Argentina. His most recent research examines the forms of valorisation of capital in the industrial sector, with a regional focus on Latin America. His other research interests include the economic dynamics of capital accumulation in Argentina and general topics of the Marxian critique of political economy.
