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After a few introductory notes on the relation between production of value, productivity, economic crises, and inflation, this article submits a theory of exchange rates, revaluations, and devaluations in terms of tendential (and counter-tendential) international distribution of value both among individual countries and between the imperialist centre on the one hand and the dominated block on the other. This framework is then used to examine the process leading towards the EMU and the Euro and the conclusion is reached that, in spite of the different EMU countries' divergent interests, their common advantage is that the costs of this further step in the process of European integration will be paid by Europe's labour. Next, the relation between the DM and the Euro on the one hand and the US dollar on the other is clarified and the link is established with monetary crises. The 1994-95 crisis is then used as an illustration.

This article starts with a discussion of the capitalist production relations which are defined as the relations binding two types of agents of production and the means of production. These relations are considered from the point of view of ownership, expropriation of value, and function performed. The ownership element is given the determinant role in the sense that the owner of the means of production is also the expropriator of surplus value (exploiter) and he who performs the function of capital (non-labourer), Vice versa for the non-owner of the means of production who is also the exploited and the performer of the function of labour (labourer). There is in this case correspondence between the determinant and the determined elements. Thus the two fundamental classes under capitalism are defined in terms of correspondence among the three aspects of the production relations. But the concept of determination implies both correspondence and contradiction between the determinant and the determined elements. The middle classes are identified in terms of contradiction among the three aspects of the production relations. Thus, there are agents ('the new middle class') who do not own the means of production and who perform either only the global function of capital or both this function and the function of the collective worker. This analysis of the capitalist production relations provides the opportunity for introducing the concept of positions (a fractional unit of the capitalist production process) which has both a technical content (given by the technical division of labour) and a social content (just as the capitalist production process rests on certain production relations, so does each of its fractional units). Thus, an agent of production by simply filling a position becomes a carrier of certain production relations and thus can be placed, at this level of abstraction, in the class structure. Subsequently, the thesis is submitted that the reproduction of classes depends on the production of both positions and agents, where the former has the determinant role. This implies that there can be a discrepancy between positions and agents at the level of the economic, i.e. that there can be a discrepancy between the value of an agent's labour power and the value required by a position. The devaluation of labour power is an important example of-such a discrepancy. A distinction is made between two types of devaluation of labour power: wage goods devaluation and devaluation through dequalification. I t is the latter which explains the reduction of skilled to average labour (technical dequalification of positions) and thus also the disappearance of the global function of capital (social dequalification of positions). Thus, Downloaded by [Purdue University] at 16:30 13 April 2015 362