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1 – 10 of 921David Gordon’s early work included a focus on cities and their role in capitalist development, but he didn’t complete or publish an ambitious project called CAPITALopolis. Gordon…
Abstract
David Gordon’s early work included a focus on cities and their role in capitalist development, but he didn’t complete or publish an ambitious project called CAPITALopolis. Gordon instead developed a framework linking Marxian insights with historical analysis of institutional impact and change through his social structures of accumulation framework. Subsequent mainstream and radical urban analyses didn’t use Gordon’s work, but his early writings are consistent with his passion for fighting racial and economic inequality, and understanding those forces systematically as part of the history and logic of capitalism.
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This chapter attempts an evaluation of Lenin's economic thought from a Marxian standpoint. This chapter argues that Lenin's reading of Marx's Capital in Development of Capitalism…
Abstract
This chapter attempts an evaluation of Lenin's economic thought from a Marxian standpoint. This chapter argues that Lenin's reading of Marx's Capital in Development of Capitalism in Russia (1899) was biased toward Ricardian or logic-historical interpretation of value, disproportionality theory of crisis as well as economic determinism, characteristic of the Second International Marxism. While admitting that Lenin overcame economic determinism and reformist politics of the Second International Marxism in his Imperialism (1917), this chapter shows that some essential elements, such as thesis of progressiveness of capitalism, stagiest or typologist conceptions of capitalism, still persisted within and after Imperialism. Moreover, this chapter argues that Lenin's Imperialism cannot be considered as a successful concretization of three latter parts of Marx's plan of critique of political economy in Grundrisse (1857), that is, State (Part 4), Foreign Trade (Part 5), and World Market Crisis (Part 6). This chapter also argues that the ambivalence of Lenin's economic thoughts and incomplete break with the Second International Marxism unexpectedly led to Stalinist thesis of state monopoly capitalism, market socialist ideas, and reformist conception of “varieties of capitalisms.”
Marx is widely regarded today as an “evolutionary”economist. However, what is clear from a close examination of thewritings of both Marx and Engels is that they did not actually…
Abstract
Marx is widely regarded today as an “evolutionary” economist. However, what is clear from a close examination of the writings of both Marx and Engels is that they did not actually take Darwin′s theory of natural selection on board. Consequently, if their theory of socio‐economic change is evolutionary, it is not so in a Darwinian sense. Considers the different sense in which the economics of Marx can be regarded as “evolutionary” and the distance between Darwinian and Marxian conceptions of natural or social change.
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The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate consumer society through various perspectives. In addition, it applies Buddhist economics as an exemplary model which helps…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate consumer society through various perspectives. In addition, it applies Buddhist economics as an exemplary model which helps managing consumer society.
Design/methodology/approach
The study started by comparing and contrasting the management of consumption between Mainstream and Buddhist economic. In addition, various perspectives such as Marxian economics, Frankfurt School, sociology as well as social critics are added to comprehend consumer society. Finally, it proposed the practices of Buddhist economics as an exemplary model for managing consumer society.
Findings
The study found that while Mainstream economics focusses on increasing the amount of goods and services, Buddhist economics focusses on converting the insatiable to satiable desires. There are two viewpoints of the interconnected spheres of consumption and production through the evolution of consumerism; a producer-led approach and a consumer-led approach. This polarization presents the debate in a very well-established tension between structure and agency.
Originality/value
This paper proposed an exemplary model for managing consumer society by applying the dialectical relationship of both structure and agency.
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André Gide's prophetic words during an interview at Karlsbad in 1933: “Hitler represents a delay in the progress of humanity. There will be another peaceful Revolution in Spirit …
Abstract
André Gide's prophetic words during an interview at Karlsbad in 1933: “Hitler represents a delay in the progress of humanity. There will be another peaceful Revolution in Spirit — different from Capitalism, Socialism‐Communism and Fascism — which will guide the development of humanity to its right destination.”
These two books reflect very different attitudes to classical economics: O'Brien writes from a neoclassical standpoint, Napoleoni from a Marxist one. Two questions deserve…
Abstract
These two books reflect very different attitudes to classical economics: O'Brien writes from a neoclassical standpoint, Napoleoni from a Marxist one. Two questions deserve consideration. Is anything worthwhile to be gained by devoting attention to the works of the classical economists (and of Marx)? Where, if we do turn to the classics, do they lead us?
David M. Gordon advanced labour economics with his theory of labour market segmentation, in which jobs rather than the marginal productivity of individual workers were the unit of…
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David M. Gordon advanced labour economics with his theory of labour market segmentation, in which jobs rather than the marginal productivity of individual workers were the unit of analysis. He advanced economic historiography and macroeconomics by conceptualising social structures of accumulation – a framework built on the foundation of his institutionalist training and enriched by his study of Marxist economics. By appropriating methods from other social science disciplines into econometrics, he augmented empirical analysis in economics. He was a founding member of the Union of Radical Political Economics and its journal, the Review of Radical Political Economics – that advanced and promoted heterodox, radical, and Marxist economists in the United States. His contributions to economics, to organised labour, and to the New School for Social Research, where I studied with him, were stunning.
Part 1 lays out some context about the New School Graduate Faculty where Gordon taught. Part 2 explores what historical forces, including his family, led to his expansive creativity. Part 3 summarises how he expanded labour economics to include the relations as well as the technology of production, linked his understanding of the production process to a historical materialist view of labour in the United States, then extended that to econometric analyses of the US macroeconomy. Part 4 presents a bibliometric analysis to provide some idea of the impact of his work. I end with some concluding remarks.
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- David M. Gordon
- labor market segmentation
- social structures of accumulation
- New School for Social Research
- United States
- B. History of economic thought
- methodology and heterodox approaches
- C. mathematical and quantitative methods
- J. labor and demographic economics
- N. economic history
- economic development
- innovation
- technological change and growth
The purpose of this paper is to assess Marx's enduring significance in the center of his thought, the first volume of Capital. In Capital and related writings, Marx systematically…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess Marx's enduring significance in the center of his thought, the first volume of Capital. In Capital and related writings, Marx systematically works out his theory of value. Although Marx's value theory has been widely thought to be internally inconsistent, the “myth of inconsistency” in reclaiming Marx's “Capital” has been recently refuted by Kliman.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on Kliman's refutation, a logically coherent interpretation of Marx's theory is on hand. The paper therefore aims to bring out the philosophical character of Marx's critique of political economy, to which the terms and relations of value theory are essential. It is rooted in the abiding humanism he first discovered through his critical appropriation and transformation of Hegelian philosophy.
Findings
Following Raya Dunayevskaya in Marxism and Freedom, this paper interprets Marx to have founded a new critical science of society “that was at the same time a philosophy of history.” Hence Marx's use of ontological categories in Capital (“substance,” “essence,” “appearance”) is fully methodologically self‐conscious and deliberate. Categories derived from Hegel's Science of Logic (as Lenin rightly grasped) explain the “bewitched and distorted world” of capitalist social relations.
Originality/value
This paper shows that, thinking historically, Marx works out the “notion” of capital from the standpoint of its negation. As if seen through a camera obscura, capital is the domination of alienated, past, objectified, abstract, and dead labor over living labor power. In conclusion, emphasis is placed on the subjective as well as the objective condition necessary to the revolutionary transcendence of the law of value.
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Notes taken and edited by David L. Prychitko
Peter Boettke and I had taken Don Lavoie's graduate Comparative Economic Systems course during the Fall of 1985. Lavoie had just published Rivalry and Central Planning (Lavoie…
Abstract
Peter Boettke and I had taken Don Lavoie's graduate Comparative Economic Systems course during the Fall of 1985. Lavoie had just published Rivalry and Central Planning (Lavoie, 1985b) and National Economic Planning: What is left? (Lavoie, 1985a), and was at the cusp of establishing himself as a major player in the comparative systems and contemporary critique of socialist planning literature.1