NON DIMENTICARE MAI LA LOTTA DI CLASSE

The intervention discusses Roberto Finelli’s last book, An accomplished patricide. Marx's final confrontation with Hegel, following the structure of the book. I agree with Finelli that the early Marx is somehow compromised with Feuerbach’s Gattung; at the same time, a ‘backward’ reading of Marx reveals that some key notions of the 1844 Economic-Philosophic Manuscripts reappear in different form in the Grundrisse as well as in Capital. My comment then focuses on the confusions and indeterminacies plaguing Finelli’s refer-ence to Arbeits-kraft, ‘labour-power’. Dealing with abstract labour, I show that Finelli’s in-terpretation is defective because he never considers the dimension of the collective worker, and because his view of abstract labour too often reduces it to simple labour, increasingly devoid of skills. To move beyond Finelli’s limits we need to consider the processual consti-tution of capitalist reality, and to distinguish carefully the eventual validation of private la-bours on the market from the immediate socialisation of collective labour going on within the immediate production process. In my opinion, the failure of Finelli’s dual Parricide is a reminder of the need to move forward towards a re-reading of Marx’s abstract value theory of labour as a macro-monetary theory of capitalist production

Finance and the Realization Problem in Rosa Luxemburg: a ‘Circuitist’ Reappraisal

Artykuł wykazuje, że Róża Luksemburg przeprowadziła swoją analizę akumulacji kapitalistycznej w duchu „cyrkulatywistycznej”, makroekonomicznej interpretacji kapitalizmu jako pieniężnej gospodarki wytwórczej. Autorzy analizują uwagi poczynione przez Luksemburg na temat schematu reprodukcji rozszerzonej wprowadzonego przez Marksa w drugim tomie „Kapitału” oraz streszczają krytyki jej podejścia w wydaniu Mikołaja Bucharina, Michała Kaleckiego i Joan Robinson. Argumentują także, że nie można zredukować stanowiska Luksemburg wyłącznie do statusu „podkonsumpcjonizmu”, a jej analizy składają się na jasną makroekonomiczną ilustrację pieniężnego i sekwencyjnego charakteru procesu kapitalistycznego

Open Education and the emancipation of academic labour

I have previously argued that open education is a liberal project with a focus on the freedom of things rather than the freedom of people (Winn, Joss. 2012. “Open Education: From the Freedom of Things to the Freedom of People.” In Towards Teaching in Public: Reshaping the Modern University, edited by Michael Neary, Howard Stevenson, and Les Bell, 133– 147. London: Continuum). Furthermore, I have argued that despite an implicit critique of private property with its emphasis on ‘the commons’, the literature on open education offers no corresponding critique of academic labour (Neary, Mike, and Joss Winn. 2012. “Open Education: Common(s), Commonism and the New Common Wealth.” Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organization 12 (4): 406–422). In this paper, I develop my critical position that an emancipatory form of education must work towards the emancipation of teachers and students from labour, the dynamic, social, creative source of value in capitalism. In making this argument, I first establish the fundamental characteristics of academic labour. I then offer a ‘form-analytic’ critique of open access, followed by a corresponding critique of its legal form. Finally, I critically discuss the potential of ‘open cooperatives’ as a transitional organisational form for the production of knowledge through which social relations become ‘transparent in their simplicity’ (Marx, Karl. 1976. Capital, Vol. 1. London: Penguin Classics, 172)

Social surplus approach and heterodox economics

Given the emphasis on social provisioning in heterodox economics, two of its central theoretical organizing principles are the concepts of the total social product and the social surplus. This appears to link heterodox economics to the social surplus approach associated with the classical economists and currently with Sraffian economists. However, heterodox economics connects agency with the social surplus and the social product, which the Sraffians reject as they take the level and composition of the social product as given. Therefore the different theoretical approach regarding the social surplus taken in heterodox economics may generate a different but similar way of theorizing about a capitalist economy. To explore this difference is the aim of the paper. Thus the paper is divided into four parts and a conclusion. In the first section social provisioning and the social surplus is introduced. In the second section, the Sraffian social surplus approach is delineated while in the third section the heterodox social surplus approach is delineated. In the fourth section of the paper, some of the implications emerging from the differences between the two approaches are discussed. The paper is concluded in the final section

7. La solitudine del maratoneta

In economic theory the conclusions are sometimes less interesting than the route by which they are reached.P. Sraffa Introduzione Il rapporto tra Sraffa e Marx è tema molto controverso. Dopo l’apertura alla consultazione dell’archivio Sraffa presso la Wren Library del Trinity College – che contiene tanto gli Sraffa Papers (SP) quanto la Sraffa Collection (SC) – non è più possibile non tenere conto della circostanza che Sraffa modificò radicalmente il suo giudizio sulla cosiddetta teoria marxi..

Il capitale come critica dell’economia politica e come politica dell’economia critica

Marx pubblicò la prima edizione del Capitale nel 1867, esattamente centocinquant’anni fa, e quest’anno cade il bicentenario della sua nascita. Sembra dunque essere questo un momento opportuno per tracciare un bilancio di quanto vi è di vitale e illuminante nell’eredità marxiana. Propongo in quel che segue una sorta di introduzione metodologica al Capitale. Il significato di «critica» Il mio discorso prende avvio da un tentativo di comprendere quale sia il significato del sottotitolo del Capit..