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Exchange Value
In political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value (German: ''Tauschwert'') refers to one of the four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market, the other three attributes being use value, economic value, and price. Thus, a commodity has: * a value, represented by the socially necessary labour time to produce it (Note: the first link is to a non-Marxian definition of value); * a use value (or utility); * an exchange value, which is the proportion at which a commodity can be exchanged for other commodities; * a price (an actual selling price or an imputed ideal price). These four concepts have a very long history in human thought, from Aristotle to David Ricardo, and became ever more clearly distinguished as the development of commercial trade progressed, but have largely disappeared as four distinct concepts in modern economics. This entry focuses on Marx's summation of the results of economic thought ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Economy
Political economy is the study of how economic systems (e.g. markets and national economies) and political systems (e.g. law, institutions, government) are linked. Widely studied phenomena within the discipline are systems such as labour markets and financial markets, as well as phenomena such as growth, distribution, inequality, and trade, and how these are shaped by institutions, laws, and government policy. Originating in the 16th century, it is the precursor to the modern discipline of economics. Political economy in its modern form is considered an interdisciplinary field, drawing on theory from both political science and modern economics. Political economy originated within 16th century western moral philosophy, with theoretical works exploring the administration of states' wealth; "political" signifying the Greek word '' polity'' and "economy" signifying the Greek word '; household management. The earliest works of political economy are usually attributed to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Value-form
The value-form or form of value (german: Wertform) is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy. Marx's account of the value-form is differently adopted in later forms of Marxism, in the Frankfurt School and in post-Marxism. When social labor is split up into independent enterprises and organized capitalistically, its products take the form of an ensemble of ''commodities'' of diverse types, which face one another on the market. Production and exchange are governed by ideas and facts expressible in the forms like: * 20 yards of linen are worth one coat * 20 yards of linen have an equivalent in one coat * 20 yards of linen = one coat * 20 yards of linen cost $100 * The price of 20 yards of linen is $100 * 20 yards linen = $100 The formulae above are 'expressions of value' (''Wertausdruck''). ''Worth'', ''price'', and ''equivalent'' are said to be categories of bourgeois life. Items that enter on one side or the other, here ''linen'', ''coat'' and ''dollar'', are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prices Of Production
Prices of production (or "production prices"; in German ''Produktionspreise'') is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy, defined as "cost-price + average profit". A production price can be thought of as a type of supply price for products; it refers to the price levels at which newly produced goods and services would have to be sold by the producers, in order to reach a normal, average ''profit rate'' on the ''capital'' invested to produce the products (not the same as the profit on the turnover). The importance of these price levels is, that a lot of other prices are based on them, or derived from them: in Marx's theory, they determine the cost structure of capitalist production. The market prices of products normally oscillate around their production prices, while production prices themselves oscillate around product-''values'' (the average current replacement cost in labour-time required to make each type of product). This understanding already existed in clas ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Law Of Value
The law of the value of commodities (German: ''Wertgesetz der Waren''), known simply as the law of value, is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy first expounded in his polemic '' The Poverty of Philosophy'' (1847) against Pierre-Joseph Proudhon with reference to David Ricardo's economics.See Marx, '' The Poverty of Philosophy'', chapter 1 part where Marx refers to Proudhon's own "law of value" and chapter 3, titled "Application of the Law of the Proportionality of Value/ref> Most generally, it refers to a regulative principle of the economic exchange of the products of human work, namely that the relative exchange-values of those products in trade, usually expressed by money-prices, are proportional to the average amounts of human labor-time which are currently socially necessary to produce them within the capitalist mode of production.Karl Marx, '' Capital, Volume I'', Penguin, pp. 676–77; Marx, ''Capital, Volume III'', Penguin ed., p. 522. Thus, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Transformation Problem
In 20th-century discussions of Karl Marx's economics, the transformation problem is the problem of finding a general rule by which to transform the "values" of commodities (based on their socially necessary labour content, according to his labour theory of value) into the "competitive prices" of the marketplace. This problem was first introduced by Marx in chapter 9 of the draft of volume 3 of ''Capital'', where he also sketched a solution. The essential difficulty was this: given that Marx derived profit, in the form of surplus value, from direct labour inputs, and that the ratio of direct labour input to capital input varied widely between commodities, how could he reconcile this with a tendency toward an average rate of profit on all capital invested among industries, if such a tendency (as predicted by Marx and Ricardo) exists? Marx's theory Marx defines value as the number of hours of labor socially necessary to produce a commodity. This includes two elements: First, it i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relations Of Production
Relations of production (german: Produktionsverhältnisse, links=no) is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism and in ''Das Kapital''. It is first explicitly used in Marx's published book '' The Poverty of Philosophy'', although Marx and Engels had already defined the term in '' The German Ideology''. Some social relations are voluntary or freely chosen (a person chooses to associate with another person or a group). But other social relations are involuntary, i.e. people can be socially related, whether they like that or not, because they are part of a family, a group, an organization, a community, a nation etc. By "relations of production", Marx and Engels meant the sum total of social relationships that people ''must'' enter into in order to survive, to produce, and to reproduce their means of life. As people ''must'' enter into these social relationships, i.e. because participation in them is not voluntary, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exploitation Of Labour
Exploitation of labour (also known as labor) is a concept defined as, in its broadest sense, one agent taking unfair advantage of another agent. It denotes an unjust social relationship based on an asymmetry of power or unequal exchange of value between workers and their employers. When speaking about exploitation, there is a direct affiliation with consumption in social theory and traditionally this would label exploitation as unfairly taking advantage of another person because of their inferior position, giving the exploiter the power.Dowding, Keith (2011). "Exploitation". ''Encyclopedia of Power''. SAGE Publications. pp. 232–235. . Karl Marx's theory of exploitation has been described in the '' Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' as the most influential theory of exploitation. In analyzing exploitation, economists are split on the explanation of the exploitation of labour given by Marx and Adam Smith. Smith did not see exploitation as an inherent systematic phenomenon in spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodity Fetishism
In Marxist philosophy, the term commodity fetishism describes the economic relationships of production and exchange as being social relationships that exist among things (money and merchandise) and not as relationships that exist among people. As a form of reification, commodity fetishism presents 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. In the first chapter of '' Capital: Critique of Political Economy'' (1867) commodity fetishism explicates that the social organization of labour occurs through the buying and selling of commodities (goods and services); therefore, in the marketplace, capitalist social relations among people—who makes what, who works for whom, the production-time for a commodity, etc.—are social relations among ''objects'', not among individual persons. At market, the commodities appear in a depersonalized form, as material goods ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Division Of Labor
The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, 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, and training and combinations of such 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 organization 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. Historically, 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] |
Labor Power
Labour power (in german: Arbeitskraft; in french: force de travail) is a key concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of capitalist political economy. Marx distinguished between the capacity to do work, labour power, from the physical act of working, labour. 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. Under capitalism, according to Marx, the ''productive powers of labour'' appear as the ''creative power of capital''. Indeed, "labour power at work" becomes a component of capital, it functions as working capital. Work becomes just work, workers become an abstract labour force, and the control over work becomes mainly a management prerogative. Definition Karl Marx introduces the concept in chapter 6 of the first volume of ''Capital'', as follows: :"By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intellectual Property Rights
Intellectual property (IP) is a category of property that includes intangible creations of the human intellect. There are many types of intellectual property, and some countries recognize more than others. The best-known types are patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. The modern concept of intellectual property developed in England in the 17th and 18th centuries. The term "intellectual property" began to be used in the 19th century, though it was not until the late 20th century that intellectual property became commonplace in the majority of the world's legal systems."property as a common descriptor of the field probably traces to the foundation of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) by the United Nations." in Mark A. Lemley''Property, Intellectual Property, and Free Riding'', Texas Law Review, 2005, Vol. 83:1031, page 1033, footnote 4. The main purpose of intellectual property law is to encourage the creation of a wide variety of intellectual goo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commodification
Within a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities.For animals"United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database" UN ComTrade; Josephine Donovan, "Aestheticizing Animal Cruelty," ''College Literature'', 38(4), Fall 2011 (pp. 202–217), p. 203. For slaves as commodities, Appadurai 1986, pp. 84–85; David Hawkes, ''Shakespeare and Economic Theory'', Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015, p. 130. For body commodification, Lesley A. Sharp, "The Commodification of the Body and Its Parts," ''Annual Review of Anthropology'', 29, 2000 (pp. 287–328) p. 295ff. A commodity at its most basic, according to Arjun Appadurai, is "anything intended for exchange," or any object of economic value. Commodification is often criticized on the grounds that some things ought not to be treated as commodities—for example, water, education, data, informat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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