Marx's Capital and Capitalism; Markets in a Socialist Alternative: Volume 19

No interpreter of Marx's Capital has been as highly esteemed by Marx or as little noticed as Nikolai Ivanovich Sieber. Yet Sieber's contribution has been overlooked by almost all of the participants in the innumerable debates sparked by Capital. This is not only a failure of exegesis, but significant as well, since Sieber's work, in fact, is a valuable coda to Capital. Several aspects of Marx's theory which remain obscure to many critics can be better grasped in the light of Sieber's exposition.

This paper reviews the Marxian concept of capital accumulation in the light of Paul Zarembka's (2000) recent contribution, taking into consideration the concepts of competition and composition of capital. It shows that accumulation is best understood through a class analysis. However, the capital relation is influential at different levels and it encompasses a broad range of features of modern society. In this context, this paper proposes a richer and more encompassing analysis of accumulation.

Dumenil-Levy and Foley (DLF) attempt to show that the falling rate of profit can be induced by applying Okishio's criterion of technical choice to DLF's framework on the evolution of potential technical change. This paper examines what would happen if Shaikh's criterion is applied to DLF's framework on the evolution of potential technical change. The following result is derived: while both criteria induce the K/L (capital-labor ratio) — increasing falling rate of profit at a sufficiently high wage share, only Shaikh's criterion induces the K/L — increasing falling rate of profit under a constant real wage (or a low wage share).

This paper offers a critique of the theory of market socialism and then proceeds to develop the central point of the argument — that socialism is inherently antithetical to the regulation of social relations by markets — in a more constructive manner. After a brief introduction, a summary of the contemporary market socialist case (second section) and an examination of the conceptual status of the market (third section), it is shown that the institutional arrangements proposed by market socialists are consistently subject to the totalizing rationality of market regulation (fourth section). A critique of market regulation is presented in the subsequent (fifth) section, and some implications for the theorization of the political economy of socialism are drawn out through a discussion of several transformative projects (sixth section). The conclusion outlines a perspective for further enquiry.

Marx acknowledges the importance of the symbolic dimension in human activities. It is a veil that must be lified to enable scientific study. Critical theory is defined as the operation of deconstructing the world of appearances. It is shown that there is an evolution in the ideas and subjects that Marx investigates. Changes in his use of terminology are examined: firstly from the perspective of alienation, then via the concept of ideology, and finally with reference to commodity fetishism. Capital (1867) marks a break in the evolution of Marx's thought. Initially, Marx saw the logic of appearances within a market economy as a distorted reflection of the material world, but then came to the paradoxical view that the symbolic dimension was a constituent of economic activity.

This article makes a comparative analysis of works of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Piero Sraffa, notably Philosophical Investigations and Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities respectively. In the process, the authors' method and its underlying philosophical assumptions are criticised. While Sraffa's text is taken to represent a view of society that fits in nicely with Wittgenstein's conception of the structure of language games, it is also implied that Sraffa's thinking about economic relations might very well have inspired the development of Wittgenstein's philosophy. The article argues that their common methodological effort must be considered distinctively bourgeois.

New official ideology in the USSR of the 1930s insisted on its being identical to Bolshevism and to Leninism, but in reality its distinctive traits are of such an importance as to constitute a new formation, describable as the Stalinist ideological formation. The General Secretary plays a decisive role in its formation, part of which includes “proletarianization” of the party, of the state apparatus and of culture. Although the influence of Stalinism operates quite beyond the frontiers of the USSR and beyond the years 1930–1953, this work focuses on that period in the USSR, particularly up to 1941.