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Commodity (Marxism)
In classical political economy and especially Karl Marx's critique of political economy, a commodity is any good or service ("products" or "activities") produced by human labour and offered as a product for general sale on the market. Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even though they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods. This problem was extensively debated by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow, among others. Value and price are not equivalent terms in economics, and theorising the specific relationship of value to market price has been a challenge for both liberal and Marxist economists. Characteristics of commodity In Marx's theory, a commodity is something that is bought and sold, or exchanged in a relationship of trade. * It has value, which represents a quantity of human labor. Because it has value, implies that people try ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classical Economics
Classical economics, also known as the classical school of economics, or classical political economy, is a school of thought in political economy that flourished, primarily in Britain, in the late 18th and early-to-mid 19th century. It includes both the Smithian and Ricardian schools. Its main thinkers are held to be Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo, Thomas Robert Malthus, and John Stuart Mill. These economists produced a theory of market economies as largely self-regulating systems, governed by natural laws of production and exchange (famously captured by Adam Smith's metaphor of the invisible hand). Adam Smith's '' The Wealth of Nations'' in 1776 is usually considered to mark the beginning of classical economics.Smith, Adam (1776) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. (accessible by table of contents chapter titles) AdamSmith.org The fundamental message in Smith's book was that the wealth of any nation was determined not by the gol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Surplus Product
Surplus product () is a concept theorised by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Roughly speaking, it is the extra goods produced above the amount needed for a community of workers to survive at its current standard of living. Marx first began to work out his idea of surplus product in his 1844 notes on James Mill's ''Elements of political economy''. Notions of "surplus produce" have been used in economic thought and commerce for a long time (notably by the Physiocrats), but in ''Das Kapital'', ''Theories of Surplus Value'' and the ''Grundrisse'' Marx gave the concept a central place in his interpretation of economic history. Nowadays the concept is mainly used in Marxian economics, political anthropology, cultural anthropology, and economic anthropology. The frequent translation of the German "" as "surplus" makes the term "surplus product" somewhat inaccurate, because it suggests to English speakers that the product referred to is "unused", "not needed", or "redun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capitalist Mode Of Production (Marxist Theory)
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by a number of basic constituent elements: private property, profit motive, capital accumulation, competitive markets, commodification, wage labor, and an emphasis on innovation and economic growth. Capitalist economies tend to experience a business cycle of economic growth followed by recessions. Economists, historians, political economists, and sociologists have adopted different perspectives in their analyses of capitalism and have recognized various forms of it in practice. These include '' laissez-faire'' or free-market capitalism, state capitalism, and welfare capitalism. Different forms of capitalism feature varying degrees of free markets, public ownership, obstacles to free competition, and state-sanctioned social pol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Use-value
Use value () or value in use is a concept in classical political economy and Marxist economics. It refers to the tangible features of a Commodity (Marxism), commodity (a tradeable object) which can satisfy some human requirement, want or need, or which serves a useful purpose. For Karl Marx's critique of political economy, any commodity has a value and a use-value — the former manifestly appearing as exchange-value in any exchange-relation in which bearers of commodities mutually alienate and appropriate each-others commodities on the market, it's foremost the proportion in which any commodity is exchangeable for any commodities, it's form as the Price, money form within money economies. Marx acknowledges that commodities being traded also have a ''general utility'', implied by the fact that people want them, but he argues that this by itself says nothing about the specific character of the economy in which they are produced and sold. Origin of the concept The concepts of v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Supply Chain
A supply chain is a complex logistics system that consists of facilities that convert raw materials into finished products and distribute them to end consumers or end customers, while supply chain management deals with the flow of goods in distribution channels within the supply chain in the most efficient manner. In sophisticated supply chain systems, used products may re-enter the supply chain at any point where residual value is recyclable. Supply chains link value chains. Suppliers in a supply chain are often ranked by "tier", with first-tier suppliers supplying directly to the client, second-tier suppliers supplying to the first tier, and so on. The phrase "supply chain" may have been first published in a 1905 article in ''The Independent (New York City), The Independent'' which briefly mentions the difficulty of "keeping a supply chain with India unbroken" during the British expedition to Tibet. Overview A typical supply chain can be divided into two stages namely, produ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Relations
A social relation is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more conspecifics within and/or between groups. The group can be a language or kinship group, a social institution or organization, an economic class, a nation, or gender. Social relations are derived from human behavioral ecology, and, as an aggregate, form a coherent social structure whose constituent parts are best understood relative to each other and to the socioecology, social ecosystem as a Holism in science, whole. History Early inquiries into the nature of social relations featured in the work of sociologists such as Max Weber in his theory of social action, where social relationships composed of both positive (affiliative) and negative (agonistic) interactions represented opposing effects. Categorizing social interactions enables observational and other social research, such as Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodity Fetishism
In Marxist philosophy, commodity fetishism is the perception of the economic relationships of production and exchange as relationships among things (money and merchandise) rather than among people. As a form of Reification (Marxism), reification, Commodity (Marxism), commodity fetishism presents Value-form, economic value as inherent to the commodities, and not as arising from the workforce, from the human relations that produced the commodity, the goods and the services. Concept In the first chapter of ''Das Kapital, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy'' (1867), commodity fetishism is used to explain how the social organization of labour manifests in the buying and selling of commodities (goods and services). In the marketplace, social relations among people—who makes what, who works for whom, the production-time for a commodity, etc.—are represented as social relations among objects. In the process of Trade, commercial exchange, commodities appear in a depersonali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reification (Marxism)
In Marxist philosophy, reification (''Verdinglichung'', "making into a thing") is the process by which human social relations are perceived as inherent attributes of the people involved in them, or attributes of some product of the relation, such as a traded commodity. As a practice of economics, reification transforms objects into subjects and subjects into objects, with the result that subjects (people) are rendered passive (of determined identity), whilst objects (commodities) are rendered as the active factor that determines the nature of a social relation. Analogously, the term Hypostasis (philosophy and religion), hypostatization describes an effect of reification that results from presuming the existence of any object that can be named and presuming the existence of an abstractly conceived object, which is a Reification (fallacy), fallacy of reification of Ontology, ontological and epistemology, epistemological interpretation. Reification is conceptually related to, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labour Power
Labour power (; ) is the capacity to work, a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do the work, i.e. labour power, and the physical act of working, i.e. labour. Human labour power exists in any kind of society, but on what terms it is traded or combined with means of production to produce goods and services has historically varied greatly. The general idea of labour-power had existed previously in classical political economy. Adam Smith's ''The Wealth of Nations'' and David Ricardo's '' On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation'' already referred to the "productive powers of labour". However, Marx made the concept much more precise, critically examining the functions of labour-power in production, how labour-power is used, organized and exploited, and how it is typically valued and priced in bourgeois society. Under capitalism, according to Marx, the ''productive powers of labour'' a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Means Of Production
In political philosophy, the means of production refers to the generally necessary assets and resources that enable a society to engage in production. While the exact resources encompassed in the term may vary, it is widely agreed to include the classical factors of production (land, labour, and capital) as well as the general infrastructure and capital goods necessary to reproduce stable levels of productivity. It can also be used as an abbreviation of the "means of production and distribution" which additionally includes the logistical distribution and delivery of products, generally through distributors; or as an abbreviation of the "means of production, distribution, and exchange" which further includes the exchange of distributed products, generally to consumers. The concept of "Means of Production" is used by researchers in various fields of study — including politics, economics, and sociology — to discuss, broadly, the relationship between anything that can have p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Money
Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are: medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment. Money was historically an emergent market phenomenon that possessed intrinsic value as a commodity; nearly all contemporary money systems are based on unbacked fiat money without use value. Its value is consequently derived by social convention, having been declared by a government or regulatory entity to be legal tender; that is, it must be accepted as a form of payment within the boundaries of the country, for "all debts, public and private", in the case of the United States dollar. The money supply of a country comprises all currency in circulation (banknotes and coins currently issued) and, depending on the particular definiti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Division Of Labour
The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise ( specialisation). Individuals, organisations, and nations are endowed with or acquire specialised capabilities, and either form combinations or trade to take advantage of the capabilities of others in addition to their own. Specialised capabilities may include equipment or natural resources as well as skills. Training and combinations of equipment and other assets acting together are often important. For example, an individual may specialise by acquiring tools and the skills to use them effectively just as an organisation may specialise by acquiring specialised equipment and hiring or training skilled operators. The division of labour is the motive for trade and the source of economic interdependence. An increasing division of labour is associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and the increasing complexity of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
