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Reflecting on “The Rehabilitation of Karl Marx” as a theoretical economist 100 years after his death, Robert Paul Wolff, on the way to writing Understanding Marx, noted that Marx had written, “at a conservative estimate, five thousand pages of theoretical material”. Therefore, in order to understand Marx's theoretical achievement, which Wolff compares with Darwin, Freud and Einstein (p. 714), “The simplest sort of common sense demands that we estimate Marx's place in the intellectual history of our civilization on the basis of this mass of economic theory” (p. 713). In addition to the three volumes of Capital, the three volumes of the Theories of Surplus Value, the Grundrisse, and the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, however, “Marx also wrote, as a young man, a handful of exuberant, obscure, derivative, romantic reflections on the human condition…The same sort of common sense dictates that we not construe these youthful speculations as the final utterances of the true Marx” (p. 713). With these assertions, Wolff is reviving an old issue, for the benefit of a “modern mathematical reinterpretation of Marx” (pp. 715–16), that some had thought was laid to rest by the widespread availability of the Grundrisse.

Rethinking Marxism after the Cold War includes the task of reconstructing its genesis, beginning with the role of left Hegelianism in Marx′s development of historical materialism. Reviews the debates within the Hegelian school at the time of Marx′s “conversion” to it, in order to situate his dissertation project (1838‐41) on the difference between the Democritean and Epicurean philosophy of nature. A standard view has Marx writing from the perspectives of his mentor, Bruno Bauer, with whom he later broke in “On the Jewish Question” (1843). Argues that this view is incorrect. Instead, Marx constructs an analogy, according to which Democritus is to the Old Hegelians as Epicurus is to the Young Hegelians. The Epicurean “atom” then becomes a cryptogram of Bauerian Selbstbewusstsein. Although Epicurus has his sympathy, Marx is ultimately critical of him. Epicurean freedom is abstract and theoretical, but the liberation Marx aims towards is concrete and effective.

The International Integrated Reporting Council introduced the concept of integrated thinking skills to the accounting world overall. This study uses a constructivist approach to address the development of integrated thinking skills for future professional accountants during higher education. This issue is relevant as many professional accounting bodies expect that integrated thinking skills are developed during the higher education of prospective professional accountants. Despite this expectation, there is limited guidance available to academics in the accounting education field to do so. By means of a literature review as well as an empirical study, this chapter develops a constructivist model that can be used by academics to develop integrated thinking skills during the higher education of prospective professional accountants. The model addresses the foundation, appropriate pedagogies, disciplinarity type, and point of introduction of integrated thinking principles in accounting education.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of sustainability reporting and the assurance thereof in South Africa.

The paper takes the form of a literature review and a study of empirical evidence obtained through content analysis of the sustainability reports of companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange Socially Responsible Investment Index for 2009.

Although sustainability reporting and the independent assurance thereof are widely researched and advocated in the literature, only a limited number of companies obtained independent assurance on their sustainability reporting.

The paper supports the recommendations of King III (effective from 1 March 2010) that companies should provide integrated reporting in terms of both their finances and sustainability, and that the sustainability reporting and disclosure should be independently assured.

Max Weber called the maxim “Time is Money” the surest, simplest expression of the spirit of capitalism. Coined in 1748 by Benjamin Franklin, this modern proverb now has a life of its own. In this paper, I examine the worldwide diffusion and sociocultural history of this paradigmatic expression. The intent is to explore the ways in which ideas of time and money appear in sedimented form in popular sayings.

My approach is sociological in orientation and multidisciplinary in method. Drawing upon the works of Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, Wolfgang Mieder, and Dean Wolfe Manders, I explore the global spread of Ben Franklin’s famed adage in three ways: (1) via evidence from the field of “paremiology” – that is, the study of proverbs; (2) via online searches for the phrase “Time is Money” in 30-plus languages; and (3) via evidence from sociological and historical research.

The conviction that “Time is Money” has won global assent on an ever-expanding basis for more than 250 years now. In recent years, this phrase has reverberated to the far corners of the world in literally dozens of languages – above all, in the languages of Eastern Europe and East Asia.

Methodologically, this study unites several different ways of exploring the globalization of the capitalist spirit. The main substantive implication is that, as capitalism goes global, so too does the capitalist spirit. Evidence from popular sayings gives us a new foothold for insight into questions of this kind.

Documents and notes the specific content of Marx′s postulate (in the original German edition of Das Kapital, 1867) that “der Mensch von Natur...ein gesellschaftliches thier ist”. All the prominent English editions (unlike the French, Russian, Italian and Spanish versions examined) except one omit the “by nature” qualifier. Suggests reasons for and the significance of this critical and essentially mysterious omission.

Despite profound differences, both the German Historical School and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School have in common a theoretical and cultural heritage in Central European traditions of social thought and philosophy. Although both schools often are perceived as quintessentially German traditions of economic and social research, their methodological presuppositions and critical intent diverge strongly. Since the objective of the Frankfurt School was to carry the theoretical critique initiated by Marx into the twentieth century, and since its members did so on a highly abstract level of theoretical criticism, the suggestion may be surprising that in terms of their respective research agendas, there was a common denominator between the German Historical School and the Frankfurt School critical theory. To be sure, as will become apparent, the common ground was rather tenuous and indirect. We must ask, then: in what respects did their theoretical and analytical foundations and orientations overlap? How did the German Historical School, as a nineteenth-century tradition of economic thinking, influence the development of the Frankfurt School?

While a political activist organising Jewish workers in Galicia, before the First World War and in the Communist Workers' Party of Poland, between 1919 and 1925, Henryk Grossman wrote substantial Marxist works on the economic history of Galicia and Poland. His principal contributions to economic theory, from 1919 and into the 1940s, were the identification of Marx's method and the fundamental structure of Capital; the significance of the distinction between use value and value, at all levels of Marx’s economic analysis; and the elaboration of Marx's account of capitalism's tendency to break down and its consequent, unavoidable proneness to economic crises, grounded in the tendency for the rate of profit to fall and its counter-tendencies. While the reception of Grossman's analyses was generally hostile, they are of vital importance for those seeking to understand and overturn capitalism today.