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Tag Archives: wage labor
Surplus Value (draft)
Another draft chapter for my book. All comments welcome. The most interesting part, I think, is the last section. Surplus Value Marx begins Capital with an analysis of the commodity form. He immediately tells us why: because the commodity is … Continue reading
Posted in book-drafts, Uncategorized
Tagged circulation, Exploitation, FMT, fundamental marxian theorem, marx, method, profit, surplus value, temporal, tssi, value, wage labor
24 Comments
Law of Value 6: Socially Necessary Labor Time
We’ve probably all heard Marx’s famous description of the higher phase of communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Marx didn’t actually come up with this phrase but he quotes it in one his rare commentaries on communism. Here an hour of one person’s work is equal to an hour of anyone else’s, creating a basis for real equality throughout society, regardless of the productive abilities (or privileges) of individuals. In the Critique of the Gotha Program Marx describes the lower phase of communism as a system in which, after an hour of labor, all workers receive a certificate entitling them to a certain amount of consumption goods in proportion to their working time, not their level of productivity. There is no SNLT, and no inequality, because everyone’s work has the same social power. Obviously this is not a robust plan for how a communist society should be run. But it gives us a glimpse into the sort of radical questions we should be asking ourselves when thinking about communism. Continue reading
Law of Value 5: Contradiction
We are all painfully aware that modern society is full of social antagonisms. There’s poverty amidst great wealth, over-work alongside massive unemployment, banks taking away homes, gentrification, racial tensions, violence against women, labor struggles, environmental apartheid, police brutality, gang violence, hate groups, massive dislocations of populations, and lots of war. Marx was interested in explaining all of these antagonisms, but he doesn’t start his analysis with any of them. Continue reading
Posted in Econ 101-value profit exploitaiton, The Law of Value
Tagged capital, capitalism, class, crisis, Das Kapital, economics, Exploitation, karl marx, labor, labor theory of value, profit, surplus value, use, value, wage labor
35 Comments
Law of Value 6 (or 5): Contradictions – a draft
Marx is always talking about contradictions in the law of value. But these aren’t logical contradictions like “round square” or “military intelligence”. They are contradictions inscribed into the very heart of the social relations of a capitalist society. Some prefer to use the word “antagonisms”. Continue reading
Posted in The Law of Value
Tagged capital, capitalism, class, crisis, economics, Exploitation, karl marx, labor theory of value, machines, marx, profit, surplus value, value, wage labor, worker
13 Comments
Das Kapital vol.3 part1, chapter 3: The Relation of the Rate of Profit to the Rate of Surplus Value
Before we can examine the formation of a general rate of profit and the way this causes prices to diverge from values we have more examining to do of this equation for the rate of profit: s/(v+c). Continue reading
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