Author: Maurice Dobb Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521099363 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
Mr Dobb examines the history of economic thought in the light of the modern controversy over capital theory and, more particularly, the appearance of Sraffa's book The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, which was a watershed in the critical discussions constituted a crucial turning-point in the history of economics: an estimate not unconnected with his reinterpretation of nineteenth-century economic thought as consisting of two streams or traditions commonly confused under the generic title of 'the classical tradition' against which Jevons so strongly reacted.
Author: Ernesto Screpanti Publisher: Open Book Publishers ISBN: 178374782X Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 134
Book Description
In this book Ernesto Screpanti provides a rigorous examination of Marx’s theory of exploitation, one of the cornerstones of Marxist thought. With precision and clarity, he identifies the holes in traditional readings of Marx’s theory before advancing his own original interpretation, drawing on contemporary philosophy and economic theory to provide a refreshingly interdisciplinary exegesis. Screpanti’s arguments are delivered with perspicuity and verve: this is a book that aims to spark a debate. He exposes ambiguities present in Marx’s exposition of his own theory, especially when dealing with the employment contract and the notions of ‘abstract labor’ and ‘labor value’, and he argues that these ambiguities have given rise to misunderstandings in previous analyses of Marx’s theory of exploitation. Screpanti’s own interpretation is a meticulously argued counterpoint to these traditional interpretations. Labour and Value is a significant contribution to the theory of economics, particularly Marxist economics. It will also be of great interest to scholars in other disciplines including sociology, political science, and moral and political philosophy. Screpanti’s clear and engaging writing style will attract the interested general reader as well as the academic theorist.
Author: Erich H. Rast Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield ISBN: 1793616957 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 234
Book Description
The theory of value structure concerns the meaning of “better than” and “good,” as well as the way in which values serve as a basis for rational decision making. Drawing methodologically from economics and theories of decision making, the aim of serious axiology in metaethics is to do justice to problems that have puzzled philosophers of value for centuries. Can value comparisons be cyclic? Are all values comparable with each other and can decision makers just add up different aspects of an evaluation to determine the best course of action? A Theory of Value Structure: From Values to Decisions starts with a thorough introduction to the modeling of “better than” comparisons from a normative perspective. In the philosophical part of the book, Erich H. Rast argues that aspects of “better than” comparisons can differ qualitatively so much that one aspect may outrank another. Consequently, the classical weighted sum aggregation model fails. Values cannot always be summed up and comparisons may be fundamentally noncompensatory, an indeterminacy that explains problems like the apparent nontransitivity of “better than” and hard cases in decision making. Using a lexicographic method of value comparisons, Rast develops a multidimensional theory of “better than” and shows how and to which extent it can be combined with standard methods of decision making under uncertainty by using rank-dependent utility theory.
Author: Desmond McNeill Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030561232 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 324
Book Description
This book demonstrates the continuing relevance of Marx’s critique of the capitalist system, in which value is simply equated with market price. It includes chapters specifically on the environment and financialisation, and presents Marx’s qualitative theory of value and the associated concept of fetishism in a clear and comprehensive manner. Section I demonstrates how fetishism developed in Marx’s writing from a journalistic metaphor to an analytical device central to his critique. In Section II, commodity fetishism is distinguished from other forms: of money, capital and interest-bearing capital. There follows an analysis of Marx’s complex attempt to distinguish his argument from that of Ricardo, and Samuel Bailey. The section ends with a discussion of the ontological status of value: as a social rather than a natural phenomenon. Section III considers the merits of understanding value by analogy with language, and critically assesses the merits of structural Marxism. Section IV challenges Marx’s emphasis solely on production, and considers also exchange and consumption as social relations. Section V critically assesses recent Marx-inspired literature relating to the two key crises of our time, finance and the environment, and identifies strong similarities between the key analytical questions that have been debated in each case.
Author: D. Graeber Publisher: Springer ISBN: 0312299060 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 344
Book Description
Now a widely cited classic, this innovative book is the first comprehensive synthesis of economic, political, and cultural theories of value. David Graeber reexamines a century of anthropological thought about value and exchange, in large measure to find a way out of ongoing quandaries in current social theory, which have become critical at the present moment of ideological collapse in the face of Neoliberalism. Rooted in an engaged, dynamic realism, Graeber argues that projects of cultural comparison are in a sense necessarily revolutionary projects: He attempts to synthesize the best insights of Karl Marx and Marcel Mauss, arguing that these figures represent two extreme, but ultimately complementary, possibilities in the shape such a project might take. Graeber breathes new life into the classic anthropological texts on exchange, value, and economy. He rethinks the cases of Iroquois wampum, Pacific kula exchanges, and the Kwakiutl potlatch within the flow of world historical processes, and recasts value as a model of human meaning-making, which far exceeds rationalist/reductive economist paradigms.
Author: Peter C. Dooley Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 113433527X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
Exploring the origins and development of the labour theory of value, Peter Dooley examines its emergence from the natural law philosopher of the sixteenth and seventeenth century and its domination of the classical school of economics. This book will prove to be essential reading for all students of the history of economics.
Author: Prabhat Patnaik Publisher: Columbia University Press ISBN: 0231519214 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 279
Book Description
Why is money more valuable than the paper on which it is printed? Monetarists link the value of money to its supply and demand, believing the latter depends on the total value of the commodities it circulates. According to Prabhat Patnaik, this logic is flawed. In his view, in any nonbarter economy, the value we assign to money is determined independently of its supply and demand. Through an original and provocative critique of monetarism, Patnaik advances a revolutionary understanding of macroeconomics that highlights the "propertyist" position of Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. Unlike the usual division between "classical" economists (e.g., David Ricardo and Marx) and the "marginalists" (e.g., Carl Menger, William Stanley Jevons, and Léon Walras), Patnaik places "monetarists," including Ricardo, on one side, while grouping propertyist writers like Marx, Keynes, and Rosa Luxemburg on the other. This second group subscribes to the idea that the value of money is given from outside the realm of supply and demand, therefore making money a form in which wealth is held. The fact that money is held as wealth in turn gives rise to the possibility of deficiency of aggregate demand under capitalism. It is no accident that this possibility was highlighted by Marx and Keynes while going largely unrecognized by Ricardo and contemporary monetarists. At the same time, Patnaik points to a weakness in the Marx-Keynes tradition namely, its lack of any satisfactory explanation of why the value of money, determined from outside the realm of supply and demand, remains relatively stable over long stretches of time. The answer to this question lies in the fact that capitalism is not a self-contained system but is born from a precapitalist setting with which it interacts and where it creates massive labor reserves that, in turn, impart stability to the value of money. Patnaik's theory of money, then, is also a theory of imperialism, and he concludes with a discussion of the contemporary international monetary system, which he terms the "oil-dollar" standard.
Author: Iwao Hirose Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0190273356 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 456
Book Description
Value theory, or axiology, looks at what things are good or bad, how good or bad they are, and, most fundamentally, what it is for a thing to be good or bad. Questions about value and about what is valuable are important to moral philosophers, since most moral theories hold that we ought to promote the good (even if this is not the only thing we ought to do). This Handbook focuses on value theory as it pertains to ethics, broadly construed, and provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary debates pertaining not only to philosophy but also to other disciplines-most notably, political theory and economics. The Handbook's twenty-two newly commissioned chapters are divided into three parts. Part I: Foundations concerns fundamental and interrelated issues about the nature of value and distinctions between kinds of value. Part II: Structure concerns formal properties of value that bear on the possibilities of measuring and comparing value. Part III: Extensions, finally, considers specific topics, ranging from health to freedom, where questions of value figure prominently.
Author: Maurice Dobb
Author: Ernesto Screpanti
Author: Erich H. Rast
Author: William Smart
Author: Gerard Debreu
Author: Desmond McNeill
Author: D. Graeber
Author: Peter C. Dooley
Author: Prabhat Patnaik
Author: Iwao Hirose