Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Abstract labour and concrete labour refer to a distinction made by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy.It refers to the difference between human labour in general as economically valuable worktime versus human labour as a particular activity that has a specific useful effect within the (capitalist) mode of production.
Joan Robinson, who herself was considered an expert on the writings of Karl Marx, [73] wrote that the labor theory of value was largely a tautology and "a typical example of the way metaphysical ideas operate". [74] In ecological economics, the labor theory of value has been criticized, where it is argued that labor is in fact energy over time ...
However, in Marx's theory, the value-creating function of labour power is not its only function; it also importantly conserves and transfers capital value. If labour is withdrawn from the workplace for any reason, typically the value of capital assets deteriorates; it takes a continual stream of work effort to maintain and preserve their value.
Marx's theory of value differs from the classical view in his definition of labor. Marx separates it into two different types: concrete and abstract labor. [15] Concrete labor can be thought of as the unique characteristics of labor such as the work of a farmer versus a tailor. Abstract labor, on the other hand, is the general conceptualization ...
Time, Labor and Social Domination: A Reinterpretation of Marx's Critical Theory is a 1993 book by the scholar Moishe Postone released by Cambridge University Press. In the book Postone presents a reinterpretation of Marx's critical theory. The book provides a reexamination of the core categories in Marx's critique of political economy. [1] [2] [3]
Mirowski (1989) for example accuses Marx of vacillating between a field theory (labour-time currently socially necessary) and a substance theory of value (embodied labour-time). This kind of criticism is due to a confusion of the process of labour in general (adding use to a product, which under capitalism equates adding value to a commodity ...
Some basic modern criticisms of Marx's theory can be found in the works by Pearson, Dalton, Boss, Hodgson and Harris (see references). The analytical Marxist John Roemer challenges what he calls the "fundamental Marxian theorem" (after Michio Morishima) that the existence of surplus labour is the necessary and sufficient condition for profits ...
The effect was that their "labour theory of value" was disconnected from their theory of capital distributions. In Marx's theory, a true supply/demand balance in the capitalist economy—which, if it existed at all, would occur only incidentally—would mean that goods sold at their normal production price, but this did not automatically or ...