Marxian Political Economy: An outline

by James F. Becker

Overview

This book combines a lucid exposition of the fundamental categories of Marxian political economy with an interpretive analysis of advanced capitalist development. Unlike neo-Marxist economists, who attempt to reinterpret Marx in the light of Keynes, Professor Becker adopts an unalloyed Marxist approach to the leading problems of political economy. The book forthrightly defends the labour theory of value, argues that its alleged theoretical weaknesses are groundless, and demonstrates its continuing analytic fruitfulness in the age of monopoly capitalism. In the same vein, the author explains the importance of orthodox Marxist conceptions concerning both productive and unproductive labour and productive and unproductive consumption. Professor Becker uses Marx's celebrated theorem concerning the tendency of the rate of profit to fall to analyse the current 'stagflation' crisis. He argues that officially announced goals of full employment and growth are impossible without structural change. This presentation of Marxian economics critically appraises those premises of utility maximizing and economic hedonism that often underlie conventional economic theory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521068734
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	07/10/2008
Pages:	340
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

Table of Contents

Part I. The Reproduction Schemes: 1. Methodological glasses for the longer view; 2. simple and complex accumulation: the productive consumption of capital; 3. Unproductive consumption: its historical and theoretical relevance; Part II. The Labour Theory of Value: 4. The meaning and measurement of value within the context of the labour theory; 5. Value accounting, prices, and socialist planning; 6. The transformation of values into prices of production; Part III: Relationships Between Prices and Values: 7. Unequal exchange: price-value relations, irregularity, and instability; 8. Accumulation in the advanced capitalism: the nature of the crisis; 9. Marx's first and second approximations to the evolution of class structure; Part IV. The Development of Class Structure and Relationships: 10. Class structure and conflict in the managerial phase I; 11. Class structure and conflict in the managerial phase II; 12. Rotational employment and the transition to socialism.