Political Economy based on Marx

Elena Papagiannaki
Summer Academy 2022 for Pluralist Economics, 2022
Niveau: débutant
Perspective: Économie politique marxiste
Sujet: Crises, Critique du capitalisme
Format: Description du cours/syllabus

This workshop was originally taught at the Summer Academy for Pluralist Economics 2022
Instructor:  Elena Papagiannaki (Birmingham City University, UK)

‘We cannot afford their peace & We cannot bear their wars’:
Value, Exploitation, Profitability Crises & ‘Rectification’

Schedule:

Day 1

  • Workshop Session 1: INTRODUCTION (Workshop’s Structure, Political Economy as Science, Sources & Datasets)
  • Workshop Session 2: LECTURE 1: Modes of Production, Labour Theory of Value, the Law of Value & Money (RECORDING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA8WlGy3ElQ&list=PLHmyyN2MktOkw_y236lXBt3jFvAo7bWhp&index=2)
  • Workshop Session 3: DISCUSSION OF LECTURE 1 – Q&A, Quiz questions, Practical Exercises on calculating value, price and money based on statistical databases.

Day 2

  • Workshop Session 4: FREE-FLOW discussion based on Lecture 1, Q&A and potential essay topics for students’ assessment. 
  • Workshop Session 5: LECTURE 2: Marx on Surplus Value, Exploitation, Wages and the Rate of Profit (RECORDING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2xDnUbLgzU)
  • Workshop Session 6: DISCUSSION OF LECTURE 2 – Q&A, Quiz questions, Practical Exercises on calculating the rate of surplus value, the rate of profit and graphical representation based on statistical databases.

Day 3

  • Workshop Session 7: FREE-FLOW discussion based on Lecture 2, Q&A and narrowing down to possible essay topics for students’ assessment.
  • Workshop Session 8: LECTURE 3: Simple & Extended Capitalist Reproduction, Capitalist Crises, Rectification and Wars (RECORDING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7TF0Rs_Of4)
  • Workshop Session 9: DISCUSSION OF LECTURE 3 – Q&A, Quiz questions, Practical Exercises on mapping Department I and II of the economy and Productive and Unproductive labour on archeogram.

Day 4

  • Workshop Session 10: FREE-FLOW discussion based on Lecture 3, Q&A, finalising essay topics for students’ assessment and division of labour among students. 
  • Workshop Session 11: Explore journal articles and books to compose the theoretical part of the essay. 
  • Workshop Session 12: Explore statistical datasets to compose the theoretical part of the essay.

Day 5

  • Workshop Session 13:  Student meetings (facilitator present upon request) 
  • Workshop Session 14: Student meetings (facilitator present upon request)
  • Workshop Session 15: Student meetings (facilitator present upon request)

Day 6

  • Wrap-up:  Final Meeting 

Resources:

These journals, websites, databases are all good places to start searching for research on any given topic:  

Reading List:

Lecture 1 Topics

Dialectical and Historical Materialism (brief introduction)

  • Political Economy as a Science 
  • The Forces of Production, the Relations of Production and the Modes of Production
  • Class Struggle
  • The Economic Laws
  • The Classical Political Economy (CPE), Neoclassical Economics vs the Critique of Political Economy

The Law of Value (extended analysis)

  • Use Value VS Value
  • Concrete VS Abstract Labour
  • Form of Value
  • The Functions of Money
  • Price VS Value

Essential Reading:

Further reading:

  • Engels, F. (1876). 1986." The part played by labour in the transition from ape to man.". Karl Marx and Frederick Engels Selected Works. New York: International Publishers. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1876/part-played-labour/index.htm 
  • Manya M. Mooya, Aristotle to Marshall: The Evolution of Economic Value Theory. 
  • Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1888). Theses on Feuerbach, no. 11. Marx and F. Engels, The German Ideology, Pts I &, 3, 199. Available: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/ 
  • Marx, K. (1857). Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy (rough draft) Penguin, Harmondsworth. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ 
    • The Chapter on Money
  • Philp, B., and Trigg, A. (2015) Heterodox economics, distribution and the class struggle. In Jo, T, and Todorova, Z.  (eds. ) Advancing the Frontiers of Heterodox Economics: Essays in Honor of Frederic S. Lee. London: Routledge Advances in Heterodox Economics.
  • Spirkin, A.G., 1983. Dialectical materialism. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Watch:

Lecture 2 Topics

The Law of Surplus Value (extended analysis) 

  • What is Capital? 
  • Transforming Money to Capital
  • The Components of Capital 
  • Commodification of Labour OR Labour Power? 
  • The Labour Wage in Capitalism 
  • Surplus-value and Unpaid Labour
  • The Allocation of Surplus Value
  • Productive and Unproductive labour

The Rate of Profit (extended analysis)

  • The Profit of the Industrial Capitalist
  • INTRA-Industrial Competition (Competition WITHIN a branch)
  • INTER-Industrial Competition (Competition AMONG branches)
  • Merchants’ Profit, Loan Capital (Interest), Ground Rent 
  • The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall (TRPF)

Essential Reading:

  • Marx, K. (2018). Capital: Volume I. 
    • PART II: Transformation of Money into Capital – Chapter 4, 5 and 6 
    • PART III: The production of Surplus Value – Chapters 7, 8 and 9  
    • Part IV: Production of Relative Surplus Value – Chapter 12
    • Part V: The Production of Absolute and of Relative Surplus-Value – Chapters 16, 17, 18
  • Marx, K., 1910. Value, price, and profit. CH Kerr & Company. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/value-price-profit.pdf 
  • Fine B. (1989), Marx’s Capital, Palgrave MacMillan

Further reading:

  • Cuestas, J. C., and Philp, B. 2012. Economic Class and the Distribution of Income: A Time-Series Analysis of the UK Economy, 1955-2010. International Review of Applied Economics, 26(5), pp.565-578.
  • Foley D. (1986), Understanding Capital: Marx’s Economic Theory
  • Kaldor, N., 1955. Alternative theories of distribution. The review of Economic Studies, 23(2), pp.83-100.
  • Philp, B., Slater, G., and Wheatley, D. (2015) New Labour and Work-Time Regulation. Cambridge Journal of Economics 39 (3), 711-732.
  • Spencer, D., 2017. Work in and beyond the Second Machine Age: the politics of production and digital technologies. Work, employment and society, 31(1), pp.142-152.
  • Spencer, D. A. (2018). Fear and hope in an age of mass automation: debating the future of work. New Technology, Work and Employment, 33(1), 1-12.
  • Spencer, D., & Slater, G. (2020). No automation please, we’re British: technology and the prospects for work. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 13(1), 117-134.
  • Tsoulfidis, L., 2015. Contending conceptions of competition and the role of regulating capital. Panoeconomicus, 62(1), pp.15-31.

Watch:

Lecture 3 Topics

The Basic Economic Contradiction of Capitalism (brief outline)

  • The birth of the Reserve Army of Labour (Unemployment)
  • The Immiseration of the Proletariat 

The Basic Cause of Crises and their ‘solution’ (extended analysis)

  • Capitalist Simple and Extended Reproduction 
  • Disproportionality of Department I and II
  • Crisis of Over-accumulation of capital
  • The Periodicity of Crises, Rectification and Wars

Essential Reading:

  • Marx, K. (2018). Capital: Volume III. 
    • PART I - The Conversion of Surplus-Value into Profit and of the Rate of Surplus-Value into the Rate of Profit :  Chapter 2 and 3
    • Part III. The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall : Chapter 13 and 14 
  • Marxists Internet Archive (2014). POLITICAL ECONOMY, A Textbook issued by the Economics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/index.htm 
    • Part Two:  THE CAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION
  • Mavroudeas, S. (2015) The Greek saga: competing explanations of the Greek crisis. (Discussion Paper) Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University. 38 p. (Economics Discussion Papers, no. 2015-01). Available at: https://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/id/eprint/30428/1/2015_001.pdf

Further Reading:

  • Dunne, J.P., R.P. Smith, D. Willenbockel. 2005. “Models of Military Expenditure and Growth: A Critical Review.” Defence and Peace Economics. Vol. 16, No. 6, pp. 449– 461. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10242690500167791
  • Dunne, J.P. 1996. “Economic Effects of Military Expenditure in Developing Countries: A Survey,” pp. 439–464 in N.P. Gleditsch, A. Cappelen, O. Bjerkholt, R.P. Smith, and J.P. Dunne, eds. The Peace Dividend. Amsterdam: North Holland.
  • Grossmann, H., & Kennedy, T. (1992). The law of accumulation and breakdown of the capitalist system. London: Pluto Press. Available at: http://digamo.free.fr/grossm29.pdf 
  • Lenin, V. I. (1927). Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism. Vanguard Press.
  • Luxembourg R. (1913), The Accumulation of Capital. Available at: https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/ 
  • Maniatis, T. (2012, April). Marxist theories of crisis and the current economic crisis. In Forum for Social Economics (Vol. 41, No. 1, pp. 6-29). Routledge.
  • Sweezy, P. (1949), The Theory of capitalist development, London: Dennis Dobson
  • Shaikh, A. (1978), ‘Political Economy and Capitalism: Notes on Dobb’s Theory of Crisis’, p.233 2:2 (1978:June)
  • Smith, R., Dunne, P., 1994. Is military spending a burden? A ‘Marxo-marginalist’ response to Pivetti. Cambridge Journal of Economics 18 (5), 515–521.

Watch:

Download syllabus here

Tags: capital | competition | contradictions of capitalism | crisis of capitalism | financial capitalism | labour | Marx | Marxian economics | Marxism | marxist | Marxist Economics | overaccumuation | profit | reproductive labour | surplus value | unpaid labour
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Ce projet est le fruit du travail des membres du réseau international pour le pluralisme en économie, dans la sphère germanophone (Netzwerk Plurale Ökonomik e.V.) et dans la sphère francophone (Rethinking Economics Switzerland / Rethinking Economics Belgium / PEPS-Économie France). Nous sommes fortement attachés à notre indépendance et à notre diversité et vos dons permettent de le rester ! 

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