Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy : Marx and Living Labour

From his early economic works on, Marx conceived the labour of any kind of society as a set of production activities and analysed the historical modes of production as specific ways of distributing and exchanging these activities. Political economy on the contrary considers the labour only under the form of its product, and the exchange of products as commodities as the unique form of social labour exchange. For Marx, insofar as the labour creating value represents a specific mode of exchanging the society's living labour, general and abstract labour cannot not only be defined as the substance or measure unit of the commodity, as in Smith or Ricardo, but foremost as an expense of living labour, i.e. of nerves, muscles, brain, etc. Hence the twofold nature of living labour, as a concrete activity producing a use value and an expense of human labour in general producing exchange value. Marx himself claimed that this twofold nature of labour creating value was its main and most important contribution to economic science. This book aims at showing how both determines the original categories and economic laws in Capital and constitutes the profound innerspring of Marx's critique of political economy. The role and function of living labour is highlighted by dealing with the difference between Marx and Classics'theories of labour value; money and the problems of its integration in economic analysis, especially in Keynes; the transition from feudalism to capitalism; the theory of capital through a discussion on the Cambridge controversy and the transformation problem; the labour process and the principles of labour management; unemployment and overpopulation; the formulas of capital in the history of economic thought; finally, an interpretation of the current crisis based on Marx's conception of overaccumulation and speculation after having distinguished it from underconsumption and stagnation theories of crises. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Title Page 14 Copyright Page 15 Table of Contents 16 List of illustrations 19 Introduction: the living labour in the critique of political economy 20 Part I: The labour and its forms 34 1. Living labour and its objective forms (commodities and money in history) 36 1.1 The problem of abstract labour in Marxian literature 36 1.2 The historical meaning of the value forms 41 1.3 War, commerce and value in primitive exchanges 42 1.4 The labour problem in the theory of utility value 47 1.5 Abstract labour as a social form of living labour 50 1.6 What is commodity fetishism? 54 2. The necessity of money 57 2.1 Why a commodity money? 57 2.2 Abolition of gold standard and preservation of the commodity basis of central money 62 2.3 Marx against monetary Institutionalism 65 2.4 The quantitative theory of money and the problem of money integration in classical and neoclassical theories of value 70 3. The historical making of living labour as a commodity (transition to capitalism) 76 3.1 The function of money as a means of payment in the transition to capitalism 77 3.2 The core problem of transition to capitalism: the formation of living labour as a commodity 80 3.3 The two ways of transition and the world market 88 3.4 E. M. Wood and the problem of the use of the market category in history 89 3.5 The revolutionary form of merchant capital: usury 91 3.6 R. Brenner and the question of landed property in the transition problem 93 Part II: The Capital–labour Relationship 98 4. The role of labour in capital theory and the transformation problem 100 4.1 The two phases in the exchange between capital and living labour 101 4.2 The role of living labour in the reproduction of constant capital 104 4.3 The problem of capital measurement in the theory of marginal productivity 107 4.4 The real Cambridge controversy: the prices of production 111 4.5 The neoclassical reaction or variations on the corn model 114 4.6 The false problem of invariable measure of values 117 4.7 Marx’s transformation of values into prices of production and Marxists’ transformation problem 118 5. Cooperation, abstract labour and general intellect 126 5.1 Abstract labour and division of labour in Braverman 127 5.2 The abstraction process of the concrete labour in the era of Manufacture 129 5.3 The machine-based capitalist production and the principles of Taylorism 133 5.4 Taylorism under post-Fordism 137 5.5 Abstract labour in cognitive capitalism 139 5.6 The two forms of general intellect in Marx 140 6. The appropriation of living labour and the capitalist law of population 146 6.1 The rise in the organic composition of capital in the process of accumulation 147 6.2 Surplus population in the Classics 150 6.3 The ‘naturalisation’ of unemployment and growth in modern economics 152 6.4 Marx against the absolute immiseration doctrine 154 6.5 Independence of supply for living labour in relation to supply for workers 159 6.6 The problem of supply for labour in modern theories of growth 163 Part III: The Circulation of Capital 168 7. The formulas of capital circuit in the history of economic thought 170 7.1 Living labour and capital as a process 170 7.2 The circuit of commodity-capital and reproduction of capitalist relations of production 173 7.3 The circuit of money-capital and the Mercantilist wealth of nations 177 7.4 The circuit of productive capital in Political Economy 180 7.5 Keynes’ theory of money and interest and its dependence on the circuit of productive capital 182 8. The problem of constant capital in crisis theory (the weight of dead labour in the 2008 crisis) 191 8.1 The reproduction of constant capital and composition of gross product from Smith to Sraffa 192 8.2 The standard theories of crises as theories of income share imbalance 196 8.3 The ambivalent status of constant capital in stagnation theories 197 8.4 Mattick or the over-accumulation of capital without overproduction of capital-commodities 202 8.5 Marx’s theory of crises and the causes of the current crisis 206 Notes 214 References 223 Index 236 Introduction: The living labour in the critique of political economy Part I: The Labour and its Forms 1. Living Labourand its Objective Forms (commodities and money in history) 2. The Necessity of Money 3. The Historical Making of Living Labour as a Commodity (transition to capitalism) Part II: The Capital-Labour Relationship 4. The Role of Labour in a Capital Theory and the Transformation Problem 5. Co-operation, Abstract Labour and General Intellect 6. The Appropriation of Living Labour and the Capatalist Law of Population Part III: The Curculation of Capital 7. The Formulas of Capital Circuit in the History of Economic Thought 8. The Problem of Constant Capital in Crisis Theory (The weight of dead labour in the 2008 crisis)