Orthodox economics operates within a hypothesized world of perfect competition in which perfect consumers and firms act to bring about supposedly optimal outcomes. The discrepancies between this model and the reality it claims to address are then attributed to particular imperfections in reality itself. Most heterodox economists seize on this fact and insist that the world is characterized by imperfect competition. But this only ties them to the notion of perfect competition, which remains as their point of departure and base (...) of comparison. There is no imperfection without perfection. In Capitalism, Anwar Shaikh takes a different approach. He demonstrates that most of the central propositions of economic analysis can be derived without any reference to standard devices such as hyperrationality, optimization, perfect competition, perfect information, representative agents, or so-called rational expectations. This perspective allows him to look afresh at virtually all the elements of economic analysis: the laws of demand and supply, the determination of wage and profit rates, technological change, relative prices, interest rates, bond and equity prices, exchange rates, terms and balance of trade, growth, unemployment, inflation, and long booms culminating in recurrent general crises. In every case, Shaikh's innovative theory is applied to modern empirical patterns and contrasted with neoclassical, Keynesian, and Post-Keynesian approaches to the same issues. Shaikh's object of analysis is the economics of capitalism, and he explores the subject in this expansive light. This is how the classical economists, as well as Keynes and Kalecki, approached the issue. Anyone interested in capitalism and economics in general can gain a wealth of knowledge from this ground-breaking text. (shrink)

Über Jahrzehnte beanspruchten die komplementären Diskurse des östlichen partei-, später staatsoffiziellen Marxismus sowie des westlichen Antikommunismus die nahezu uneingeschränkte Definitionsmacht über das, was gemeinhin als 'Marxsche Theorie' oder 'wissenschaftlicher Sozialismus' galt. Dagegen machte sich ab Mitte der 1960er Jahre eine neue Lektüre-Bewegung vor allem in der Bundesrepublik daran, die originellen wissenschaftlichen Gehalte des Marxschen Denkens zu entdecken. Der Rezeptionsschutt der vorangegangenen 100 Jahre sollte weggeräumt werden, um für die Rekonstruktion einer kritischen Gesellschaftstheorie mit einem innovativen Methoden- und Gegenstandsverständnis Platz zu (...) schaffen. Das Buch vergegenwärtigt die Quellen, Geschichte und Resultate dieses neuen Diskussionskontexts. Drei Stränge der Debatte werden näher beleuchtet: die methodologische und werttheoretische Grundlagenforschung, die Staatsableitung sowie die Untersuchung der revolutionstheoretischen Implikationen der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie. Dabei wird gezeigt, dass in einem noch keineswegs abgeschlossenen Forschungsprozess die Umrisse einer bei Marx angelegten Theorie erkennbar werden, die wichtige Impulse zum Verständnis der modernen Reichtums- und Herrschaftsformen geben kann und in vielem geradezu das Gegenteil von dem zeigt, was man von Marx in marxistischen wie nicht-marxistischen Kreisen zu wissen glaubte. (shrink)

This book is the first complete commentary on Marx's manuscripts of 1861-63, works that guide our understanding of fundamental concepts such as 'surplus-value' and 'production price'. The recent publication of Marx's writings in their entirety has been a seminal event in Marxian scholarship. The hitherto unknown second draft of Volume 1 and first draft of Volume 3 of Capital, both published in the Manuscripts of 1861-63, now provide an important intermediate link between the Grundrisse and the final published editions of (...) Capital. In this book, Enrique Dussel, one of the most original Marxist philosophers in the world today, provides an authoritative and detailed commentary on the manuscripts of 1861-63. The main points which Dussel emphasises in this path-breaking work are: The fundamental category in Marx's theory is 'living labour' which exists outside of capital and which capital must subsume in order to produce surplus-value Theories of Surplus Value is not a historical survey of previous theories, but rather a 'critical confrontation' through which Marx developed new categories for his own theory The most important new categories developed in this manuscript are related to the 'forms of appearance' of surplus value. The final part of the book discusses the relevance of the Manuscripts of 1861-63 to contemporary global capitalism, especially to the continuing underdevelopment and extreme poverty of Latin America. (shrink)

For a century now Marxists have been searching for a 'rational kernel' of Hegelian 'dialectics' inside the 'mystical shell' of the Hegelian system. As against this entire tradition, Rosenthal insists that Hegelian philosophy is mysticism all the way through. He argues that Marx's supposed 'dialectic method' is simply a myth and proposes the provocative thesis that it is not, after all, Hegel's 'method' of which Marx made use in Capital but rather precisely Hegel's mysticism.

In a step-by-step progression through Marx's three volume work, discovers a systematic theory of socio-economic categories ordered according to the dialectical logic derived from Hegel.