(This
is based on and mostly from “Marx’s Capital” written by Ben Fine and Alfredo
Saad-Filho)
(For Part-5, please
see the blog entry dated 15-1-2012)
Chapter-2—Commodity
production
Labour
Theory of Value
a) Labour Theory Of Value and How It
Has To Be Judged
1. Marx is renowned for his
commitment to the labour theory of value which says that the value of a
commodity is equal to the labour time socially required to produce it.
2. Two main issues debated over this
labour theory of value are (a) whether Marx has unduly privileged labour in
some way by adopting this labour theory of value, and, (b) how well this this
labour theory of value serves as a theory of prices.
3. Marx’s value theory should be
judged on thee basis whether the economic relations, processes and structures
that prevail in capitalist society are properly reflected by it in thought.
b) Different views on the economic organisation
4. The division of labour and
production of use values (useful things like food, clothing, houses etc and
immaterial products like educational, health and other personal services) are
the enduring features of any human society except the simple primitive
societies.
5. But who produces what and how,
and with what implications for society are crucial questions across the social sciences.
6. Different answers are given by different
ideologies, ranging from self interest to the idea of necessity as the mother
of invention.
c) The view of the mainstream
economics
7. The mainstream economics has
taken the need for consumption justifying a universal method in which economics
is a science concerned with the allocation of scarce resources to meet
insatiable needs.
8. Mainstream economics holds the
view that the organisation of economy through market, state, household, slavery,
capitalism etc is only a matter of detail with the fundamental principle being
the duality of scarcity and need.
9. The yardstick of the efficiency
of any economic organisation is how best it solves this problem of scarcity and
need.
d) The view of Marx
10. In contrast to this view of the mainstream
economics, for Marx, social, especially class relations (slave owner and slave,
feudal lord and peasant, capitalist and wage labourer) are essential in
distinguishing one economy from another economy as well as differences with in
the economy.
11. Class relations are based on
property relations (capitalist owns means of production whereas wage labourer
owns nothing except his labour power) and distributional relations (capitalist
gets profit, wage labourer gets wage. Wages are advanced as a pre-condition of
production and profits are the result of production) and how the ownership
gives rise to forms of control over labour and production (Since capitalist
owns means of production, he is able to employ the wage labourer who has no such
means of production and utilises the labour power of the labourer for producing
commodities).
12. A crucial feature of capitalism
is that it is a highly developed system of commodity
production. What is its significance?
We
will discuss about the commodities in our further study.
కామెంట్లు లేవు:
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి