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This paper seeks to reconcile two very different views existing in the literature concerning how exchange and demand affect the magnitude of commodity values. Traditionally, value is considered to be created in production and subsequently realized in exchange. An alternative monetary approach posits that exchange itself contributes to the determination of commodity values. Proponents of each view claim that significant parts of Marx’s theory of value are compromised if their interpretation of the role of exchange is not adopted. Drawing on the work of Rosdolsky and Roberts, I argue that it is necessary to distinguish between the effects of exchange and demand. Exchange acts to reduce concrete, private labor to abstract social labor, while demand affects the magnitude of labor considered “socially necessary” in the sense of being expended in accordance with existing social need. I identify a new category of exchange value – the market-price of production – and use it to explain how changes in demand act to redistribute value across industries by affecting the magnitude of abstract labor considered to be socially necessary. In this way the major claim of the two approaches to exchange are reconciled. The magnitude of value is fully determined in production. At the same time monetary exchange effects, or brings about, a social division of labor by reducing concrete, private labor to abstract social labor and by distributing value according to social need as expressed by effective demand.

Building on an analysis of values and prices in the context of explicitly heterogeneous concrete labors, this paper formally examines Marx’s repeated imagery of capitalist competition as a process of “sharing” among “hostile brothers,” each a “shareholder” in a “social enterprise” in which particular commodities and capitals appear as “aliquot parts of the whole.” Approaching each commodity as it appears in competition – as the product of an aliquot part of the aggregate inputs to production – allows several conclusions. First, value-price transformation is equivalent to a transformation of actual production conditions (on the basis of which the social labor contained in the commodity is its value) into socially average or aliquot part production conditions (on the basis of which the social labor contained in the commodity is its production price). Second, price formation (“gravitational” adjustment to levels expressing equivalence) is the same thing as the formation of abstract labor as the homogeneous unit of measure for the labor content of commodities. Each is an aspect of a single process that simultaneously commensurates use-values as market equivalents and commensurates concrete labors as abstract labor, so that equivalents in exchange do indeed “contain” equal amounts of abstract labor. Third, concerning commodity fetishism and the “illusions” of competition, the social content of particular magnitudes becomes visible when each is represented as a “bearer” of crucial characteristics of the aggregate that have been projected onto its parts, so that what initially appears as separate, particular and individual is simultaneously connected, general, and social.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the empirical relationships between changes in OECD output, commodity prices, the real exchange rate, real money supply, unit labour costs and manufacturing in South Africa. In particular, to test a version of the Dutch disease argument that increases in the prices of South Africa’s main commodity exports have had a negative effect on domestic manufacturing against the alternative hypothesis that there is a positive relationship between such changes in commodity prices and domestic manufacturing output.

Construction of a model including real manufacturing output in South Africa as the dependent variable and the following independent variables: OECD output, an international real metals price index, a real effective exchange rate index, real M3 money supply and manufacturing unit labour costs. The time series sample data comprise 124 quarterly observations for the period 1980-2010. The model equation was tested and estimated using a Johansen cointegration approach.

The main findings are: OECD output is the single most important determinant of domestic manufacturing output; while the real exchange rate has the predicted negative sign, rising commodity prices are associated with increases rather than decreases in domestic manufacturing and; large increases in unit labour costs since the early 1980s have dragged down manufacturing over the sample period.

The finding of a positive relationship between commodity prices and domestic manufacturing means that the Dutch disease argument must be revised when applied to South Africa. While rising commodity prices may lead to a negative exchange rate effect on manufacturing competitiveness, this is more than offset by the positive growth effects associated with upswings in the commodity price cycle.

In this paper the authors examine evidence on exchange rate predictability through commodity prices for a set of countries categorized as commodity import- and export-dependent developed and emerging countries.

The authors perform in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting analysis. The commodity prices are modeled to predict the exchange rate and to analyze whether this commodity price model can perform better than the random walk model (RWM) or not. These two models are compared and evaluated in terms of exchange rate forecasting abilities based on mean squared forecast error and Theil inequality coefficient.

The authors find that primary commodity prices better predict exchange rates in almost two-thirds of export-dependent developed countries. In contrast, the RWM shows superior performance in the majority of export-dependent emerging, import-dependent emerging and developed countries.

Previous studies examined the exchange rate of commodity export-dependent developed countries mainly. This study examines both developed and emerging countries and finds for which one the changes in prices of export commodities (in case of commodity export-dependent country) or prices of major importing commodities (in case of import-dependent countries) can significantly predict the exchange rate.

This essay explores certain aspects of single product industry basic systems of the type Sraffa develops in Part I of Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities. It focusses on triangular trade as the simplest expression of the more general n-commodity case. Two elements of the framework are explored: (i) the relation of exchange between all commodities, conceived as the configuration of exchange which is applicable to the subsistence and surplus models, and (ii) the value/price expressions of labour time, applicable to the surplus model only, which posits the productivity of, remuneration to and extraction from living labour added to the system. This analysis complements and extends the Marxian reading of Sraffa’s notions of surplus and deficit industries first explored in Carter (2014b). The methodology of ‘given quantities’ in expositing the relations developed is adopted in this essay as it corresponds to the same method employed by Sraffa. This allows readers to easily move from the present essay to Sraffa’s book and importantly his archival notes which are now for all interested parties available as colour digital images on the Wren Library website.

The purpose of this second part of this special issue is to contribute to a better understanding of the nature of Soviet society. It is not possible to analyse such a society in all its complexities within the space of one study. There are, however, some economic relations which determine society's major features. We believe that commodity‐production relations in the Soviet Union are of this type.

Derivatives market has been epitomized with gross evil in the wake of the global economic crisis that ensued in 2008. This study argues for more extensive understanding of the phenomena as dynamics previously viewed unrelated now exhibit correlation. As empirical reference, this research relies on recent trends in the commodity futures contracts with analytical relation to the currency exchange rate and by extension the financial and real sectors. With varying intensity often speculative sporadic trading in crude oil, coffee, wheat, rice, sugar, and gold benchmark futures may inflict detrimental effects on the global development efforts. The issue is most acute in the emerging markets facing inflation fears, speculative movements of foreign currency-denominated funds, and underlying domestic currency value. This dynamic reasserts the concept of fundamental uncertainty allowing us to connect the typical risk-return stand with a dialectical unity of the financial, real sector, and social costs. Ultimately, issues raised in this study relate to the problems of social stability and sustained economic development in the postcrisis environment given high frequency and volatility of capital flows. As such, this chapter contributes to the literature that bridges financial empirical analysis with modern socially responsible economic development.

This paper is a translation of the third and most important chapter of Keizaigaku shi (History of Political Economy) by the Japanese Marxist economist Samezō Kuruma (1893–1982), first published in 1948. Kuruma discusses in detail the achievements and limitations of the Classical school of political economy. He examines the fundamental ideas of Adam Smith and David Ricardo regarding the determination of commodity value and the source of surplus-value, and then looks at how these ideas are connected to production price and profit. Kuruma notes that Smith and Ricardo managed to arrive at the essential labor theory of value, but that neither could correctly apply this theory to adequately explain phenomena in the realm of competition – either abandoning the labor theory of value altogether to embrace a composition theory of value (Smith) or directly applying the theory to explain phenomena without grasping the intermediary processes of development (Ricardo). Kuruma's critique of Smith and Ricardo highlights the achievement of Marx in overcoming the limitations that ultimately led to the breakdown of the Classical school of political economy.