Marx's capital

217 Pages·2004·0.689 MB·English

by  Marx, Karl, Marx, Karl, Saad-Filho, Alfredo, Fine, Ben, Marx, Karl

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MARX’S
CAPITAL
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MARX’S
CAPITAL
Fourth Edition
Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho
P
Pluto Press
LONDON • STERLING, VIRGINIA
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First published 2004 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
and 22883 Quicksilver Drive, Sterling, VA 20166-2012, USA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho 2004
The right of Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho to be identified as the
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7453 2050 3 hardback
ISBN 0 7453 2049 X paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fine, Ben.
Marx's capital / Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho.–– 4th ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–7453–2050–3 (hbk) –– ISBN 0–7453–2049–X (pbk.)
1. Marxian economics. 2. Marx, Karl, 1818–1883. Kapital. I.
Saad-Filho, Alfredo, 1964– II. Title.
HB97.5.F55 2003
335.4'1––dc22
2003017296
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Designed and produced for Pluto Press by
Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Printed and bound in the European Union by
MPG Books, Bodmin, England
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The best points in my book are: (1) the double character
of labour,according to whether it is expressed in use
value or exchange value ... (2) the treatment of surplus
value independently of its particular forms as profit,
interest, ground rent, etc.
Marx to Engels, Selected Correspondence,
Letter 99, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1934.
no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of
classes in modern society or the struggle between them.
Long before the bourgeois historians had described the
historical development of this class struggle and
bourgeois economists the economic anatomy of the
classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that
the existence of classes is only bound up with
particular historical phases in the development of
production,(2) that the class struggle necessarily leads
to the dictatorship of the proletariat,(3) that this dicta-
torship itself only constitutes the transition to the
abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
Marx to J. Weydemeyer, Selected Works of Marx and
Engels, Lawrence & Wishart, London, 1968, p. 679.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements xi
Preface to the Fourth Edition xiii
1 History and Method 1
Marx’s Philosophy 1
Method 5
Marx’s Economics 9
Issues and Further Reading 12
2 Commodity Production 14
The Labour Theory of Value 15
Labour and Labour Power 22
The Fetishism of Commodities 25
Issues and Further Reading 29
3 Capital and Exploitation 31
Exchange 31
Capital 33
Surplus Value and Exploitation 36
Absolute and Relative Surplus Value 40
Machinery and Technical Change 44
Productive and Unproductive Labour 46
Issues and Further Reading 48
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4 The Circuit of Industrial Capital 51
The Money Circuit of Capital 51
The Circuit as a Whole 53
Issues and Further Reading 59
5 Economic Reproduction 61
Simple Reproduction 61
Expanded Reproduction 63
Social Reproduction 70
Issues and Further Reading 72
6 Accumulation of Capital 74
Primitive Accumulation 74
The Development of Capitalist Production 79
Competition and Capital Accumulation 82
Issues and Further Reading 87
7 Capitalism and Crisis 89
Marx’s Theory of Accumulation and Crisis 89
Possibilities of Crisis 91
Accumulation, Crisis and the Development
of the Proletariat 96
Issues and Further Reading 100
8 The Compositions of Capital 102
The Technical Composition of Capital 102
The Organic and Value Compositions 104
Issues and Further Reading 108
9 The Falling Rate of Profit 109
Summary of the Argument 110
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The Law as Such and the Counteracting
Tendencies 111
The Internal Contradictions of the Law 114
The Empirical Implications of the Law 116
LTRPF and Crisis Theory 118
A Response to Okishio 121
Issues and Further Reading 125
10 The Transformation Problem 126
From Values to Prices of Production 127
Marx’s Transformation and Its Critics 130
Issues and Further Reading 134
11 Merchant’s Capital 135
Marx’s Category of Merchant’s Capital 135
Modified Prices of Production 137
Merchant’s Capital at a More Complex Level 139
Issues and Further Reading 141
12 Banking Capital and the Theory of Interest 142
Interest-Bearing Capital 143
Money Capital and the Financial System 144
Interest as an Economic Category 148
Issues and Further Reading 152
13 Marx’s Theory of Agricultural Rent 153
Differential Rent 1 155
Differential Rent 2 157
Absolute Rent 160
Issues and Further Reading 164