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Book part
Publication date: 9 December 2022

Roberto Lampa

Lange's rejection of bureaucratic socialism can be traced throughout his works, from the very beginning to the end. Planners and economic agents have to act under mandatory rules…

Abstract

Lange's rejection of bureaucratic socialism can be traced throughout his works, from the very beginning to the end. Planners and economic agents have to act under mandatory rules provided by economic theory to avoid the risk of an autocratic regime detached from the people's needs. Drawing upon this premise, Walrasian theory played a pivotal role to introduce rules to tie the hands of socialist bureaucrats based on scientific, economic theory. In this sense, Lange's anti-bureaucratism and Walrasianism descended from a similar political premise. However, the coexistence of conflicting views into the same theory (such as Marxian and Walrasian theories) also implied potential risks, mainly when socialist democracy is conceived in technocratic terms and Marxian theory assimilates to natural sciences.

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Polish Marxism after Luxemburg
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-890-7

Keywords

Content available
Book part
Publication date: 9 December 2022

Abstract

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Polish Marxism after Luxemburg
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-890-7

Book part
Publication date: 6 November 2015

Michael J. Thompson

To defend the thesis that critical theory has become unable to call into question and challenge the main impulses of modern capitalist societies. The reason for this is that the…

Abstract

Purpose

To defend the thesis that critical theory has become unable to call into question and challenge the main impulses of modern capitalist societies. The reason for this is that the capacities of language on the one hand and the hermeneutic processes that underlie the process of “recognition” are insufficient to counter the power of socialization to shape subjectivity and the cognitive and evaluative capacities of subjects.

Methodology/approach

I provide a critical reading of the methodology of linguistic and recognitive theories of intersubjectivity by means of a theory of domination derived from Rousseau which shapes the cognitive and epistemic powers of subjects thereby weakening their capacity to be socialized via the media of language and social recognition.

Findings

By divorcing our cognitive ideas about the social world from the social-ontological processes that shape and deform it under capitalism, this brand of critical theory succeeds in sealing off the mechanisms of social domination and power relations that were at the heart of the enterprise from its inception.

Research limitations/implications

Critical theory must move toward a more comprehensive theory of the social totality in order for it to retain its critical character.

Originality/value

The paper questions the main ideas held by the mainstream of critical theory such as its reliance on hermeneutic and linguistic forms of consciousness and social praxis as well as a theoretical reliance on pragmatic theories of mind and Mead’s conception of socialization.

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Globalization, Critique and Social Theory: Diagnoses and Challenges
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-247-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 29 April 2013

Jie Meng

This article tries to introduce product innovation into Marxist theory of capital accumulation. Although in Grundrisse Marx has already foreseen the importance of product…

Abstract

This article tries to introduce product innovation into Marxist theory of capital accumulation. Although in Grundrisse Marx has already foreseen the importance of product innovation in overcoming the limits to capital originated from the production of relative surplus value, mainstream Marxist theories of capital accumulation have up till now made few endeavours to envisage this problem. It is argued in this chapter that to introduce product innovation into Marxist theory of accumulation depends on a reconstruction of the fundamental contradictions in capital accumulation, that is the contradiction between production of surplus value and realisation of surplus value, combined with the contradiction between exchange value and use value as the driving force in its development. The production of relative surplus value based on process innovation and consequent productivity enhancement, given any specific use value, will lead to overproduction, that is the intensification of those fundamental contradictions in accumulation, which nevertheless could be mitigated by introducing product innovation. In evaluating critically the contribution by Mandel in his long waves theory, we further argue, following the lead of neo-Schumpeterians, that there is a possibility for radical product innovations to be at least semi-endogenously induced in capital accumulation, and thus paving the way for a long boom of capitalism.

Book part
Publication date: 10 June 2009

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

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A Research Annual
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-656-0

Book part
Publication date: 31 October 2014

Michael J. Thompson

To defend the thesis that the base-superstructure hypothesis central to Marxist theory is also central paradigm of the tradition of Critical Theory. This is in opposition to those…

Abstract

Purpose

To defend the thesis that the base-superstructure hypothesis central to Marxist theory is also central paradigm of the tradition of Critical Theory. This is in opposition to those who see this hypothesis as determinist and eliminating the possibilities for the autonomy of social action. In doing so, it is able to retard and atrophy the critical capacities of subjects.

Design/methodology/approach

Emphasis on the return to a structural-functionalist understanding of social processes that places this version of Critical Theory against the more domesticated forms that consider “discourse ethics” and an “ethic of recognition” as the normative research program for Critical Theory. Also, an analysis of the purpose and logic of functional arguments and their relation to Marx’s concept of “determination” is undertaken.

Findings

The essence of Critical Theory hinges upon the ways that social structures are able to deform and shape structures of consciousness of modern subjects to predispose them to forms of domination and to view the prevailing hierarchical structures of extractive domination as legitimate in some basic sense.

Research limitations/implications

The foundations of Critical Theory need to be rooted in a renewed understanding of the relation between social structure and forms of consciousness. This means a move beyond theories of social practices into the realm of social epistemology as well as the mechanisms of consciousness and their relation to ideology.

Originality/value

Few analyses of the relation between the base and the superstructure or material organization of society and the social-epistemological layer of consciousness delineate the mechanisms involved in shaping consciousness. I undertake an analysis that utilizes insights from the philosophy of mind such as the theory of intentionality as well as the sociological approach to values through Parsons.

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Mediations of Social Life in the 21st Century
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-222-7

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 18 February 2004

Fletcher Baragar

The emergence and maturation of the social sciences is an important component of the expansion of institutions of higher learning in the 20th century. The discipline of Political…

Abstract

The emergence and maturation of the social sciences is an important component of the expansion of institutions of higher learning in the 20th century. The discipline of Political Economy, increasingly institutionalized in various Canadian universities in the early decades of the century, secured a Chair at the University of Manitoba in 1909. After 1914, its title became “Political Economy and Political Science” and the department subsequently served “as the great mother department to which were attached newer social science disciplines until it was deemed appropriate to let them launch out on their own” (Pentland, 1977, p. 3). Political Science became independent in 1948, Geography in 1951, and Sociology and Anthropology in 1962 (p. 4). Agricultural Economics, which was taught in the Manitoba Agricultural College, became its own department when the college joined the university in 1924. In the 1930s, Agricultural Economics was absorbed into Department of Political Economy. However, according to Pentland (pp. 4–5) it was not until the late 1940s that agricultural economics became a significant “sub-department.” It subsequently separated itself from Political Economy and, in 1954, became an independent department in the Faculty of Agriculture (p. 5). The result of these disciplinary developments was that the faculty of the Department of Political Economy had, from time to time, members whose expertise lay outside the increasingly well-defined terrain of economics. Despite this, however, they did not seem to have any long-lasting direct impact on shaping and defining the curricula in Economics. Since these other disciplines left and became independent when they had reached a certain size or degree of influence, Economics was left to define and pursue its own agenda unencumbered by the needs of these former associates.

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Wisconsin "Government and Business" and the History of Heterodox Economic Thought
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-090-6

Abstract

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Documents on and from the History of Economic Thought and Methodology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84663-909-8

Book part
Publication date: 7 November 2011

Robert Chernomas and Fletcher Baragar

In an effort to explain the growth stagnation that hampered the United States in the period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, mainstream economists unwittingly and incompletely…

Abstract

In an effort to explain the growth stagnation that hampered the United States in the period from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, mainstream economists unwittingly and incompletely reinvented the concept of unproductive labor that is rooted in classical and Marxian economics. The price to pay for having ignored this concept had been unexplained economic events, inappropriate policy, and relative national economic decline. The mainstream economists' attempt to adopt this concept came at a cost to their theoretical core. The abandonment of the concept came at a cost to the real economy represented by the financial crisis of 2008.

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Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-255-5

Book part
Publication date: 7 November 2011

Riccardo Bellofiore

There are two influential interpretative positions in the current debate on the crisis among Marxists. The first understands financialization as a consequence of the tendential…

Abstract

There are two influential interpretative positions in the current debate on the crisis among Marxists. The first understands financialization as a consequence of the tendential fall of the rate of profit. The other interpretation, prevalent among those influenced by Keynesianism and Neoricardianism, refers to the tendency toward the crisis of realisation, because of the squeeze on the wage bill and the insufficiency of consumer demand. In both cases, the current crisis is the crisis of a feeble capitalism, permanently stagnationist. A Marxian interpretation of the crisis cannot be separated from the tendential fall of the rate of profit. This latter, however, cannot be accepted as it is presented by Marx, and it must be rethought as a meta-theory of the crisis, including within it the different crisis theories that can be derived from Capital. This article first provides a personal survey of Marx's crisis theories, often presented as opposed to each other. Second, it seeks to integrate the different positions into a unitary discourse, within a nonmechanical reading of the fall of the rate of profit. This discourse then mutates into an historical sketch of the long dynamic of capital: from the Great Depression of the end of the nineteenth century, to the Great Crash of the 1930s, to the Social Crisis in the immediate processes of valorisation of the 1960s–1970s (the Great Inflation). Finally, the “new” capitalism (the Great Moderation) and its recent crisis (the Great Recession) are read – integrating Marx and Minsky – as the conjunction between the real subsumption of labour to finance and the fragmentation of labour.

Details

Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-255-5

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