Invisible Leviathan: Marx’s Law of Value in the Twilight of Capitalism

Smith, Murray E.G.

doi:10.1163/9789004312203_002

Cited by 8 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 114 publications

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“…Revisionists, including Harvey, also reject the Marxist theory of the tendency for the rate of profit to fall (TRPF). The revisionist rejection of TRPF is in line with revisionist reformism: if the rate and ultimately the mass of surplus value is falling, this itself restricts the scope for reforms (Carchedi & Roberts 2018;Smith 2019). Revisionists are sceptical of the Marxist claim that capitalism is constantly crisis-prone and tendentially vulnerable to collapse.…”

Section: Countering Revisionists' Approach To Marxist Theory Of Class...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the whole, revisionism has little to do with Marxist political program which is described beautifully by Murray Smith (2019: 327) of Brock University in Canada, one of the leading Marxists of the world:The essential programmatic conclusion emerging from Marx’s analysis is that capitalism is constitutionally incapable of a ‘progressive’, ‘crisis-free’ evolution that would render the socialist project ‘unnecessary’, and furthermore, that a socialist transformation cannot be brought about through a process of gradual, incremental reform. Capitalism must be destroyed root and branch before there can be any hope of social reconstruction on fundamentally different foundations.…”

Section: A Marxist Critique Of Marxist Revisionismmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Marxism and revisionism in the world today

Das

2022

Capital & Class

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Lenin said, ‘We do not regard Marx’s theory as something completed and inviolable; on the contrary, we are convinced that it has only laid the foundation stone of the science which socialists must develop in all directions if they wish to keep pace with life’. Marx himself believed in the principle of ‘ruthless criticism’ of everything existing. Critiquing and revising certain ideas to strengthen an approach to society is a constructive act. But the legitimate act of revision becomes revision-ism, when the fundamental tenets of Marxism are revised in order to attack – negate – its very explanatory or scientific foundation and to justify political reformism. Indeed, since Lenin’s time, scientific socialism has been under attack from not only the ruling class and its ideologues, but also those who associate themselves with Marxism itself, including in academia. The latter are revisionist Marxists. For them, Marxism has some usefulness. But they deny the superiority of Marxism as a way of critically and scientifically interpreting the world and transforming that world in the interest of the exploited and oppressed masses in a revolutionary socialist manner. This denial of Marxism’s superiority takes the form of the denial of Marxism’s central concepts: class and capitalism. The article discusses, and critiques, various forms of revisionist Marxism (e.g. Analytical Marxism, Polanyian Marxism, Post-Modernist Marxism, and Geographical Marxism). Revisionism does respond to some recent developments in the world (e.g. the defeat of class-based movements; the complexity of class structure), but it seeks to explain these not on the basis of Marxist foundations but on the basis of scientifically inadequate ideas and in a manner that is politically reformist.

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Section: Countering Revisionists' Approach To Marxist Theory Of Class...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Marxist Critique Of Marxist Revisionismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Marxism and revisionism in the world today

Das

2022

Capital & Class

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“…(Eisenstein, 1978; italics mine). Sharon Smith says: 'the central premise of the theory of identity politics is that only those who experience a particular form of oppression are capable of fighting against it--that, generally speaking, everybody else is part of the problem and therefore can't be part of the solution, and when you come right down to it, all men benefit from women's oppression, all straight people benefit from gay oppression, and all whites benefit from racism' (Smith, 2018). they are included in identity politics ensue from the thinking, mental construction (e.g.…”

Section: The Nature Of the Political In Identity Politics And Its Limitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Identity Politics: A Marxist View

Das

2020

crcp

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This article has three main sections. In section 1, I discuss what identity politics is and what are its theoretical presuppositions. I also talk about the nature of the political action in identity politics, and about its limits. In section 2, I present my views on Marxist politics, which is centered on the theory and the politics of class, combined with the class-theory and class-politics of anti-oppression. I unpack what I consider are the Marxist notions of 'the common ground' and of 'the majority', as important components of Marxist politics. The majority, in the Marxist sense, are those who are objectively subjected to classexploitation. And in terms of the common ground for politics, there are two aspects: a) the majority of people experience one common fate, i.e. they are exploited, and b) this exploited majority are subjected to one or more of the many mechanisms of oppression (race, gender, caste, etc.), all of which represent one experience: attack on democratic rights (or the experience of 'tyranny', in Lenin's sense). In the final section, I conclude the article and draw some implications of my arguments.

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“… 7. There are numerous studies that have empirically substantiated Marx's (1981, 1993) hypothesis concerning a long term fall in the average rate of profit as a result of a rising organic composition of capital (further accompanied by a rising rate of exploitation) that induces both cyclical and long-term, secular economic crises: see, for example, a wide array of tests in Basu and Manolakos (2013), as well as Smith (2019) and Smith et al (2021) – see also the Carchedi-Roberts edited-collection World in Crisis (2018), which includes various studies from a number of different countries as well as at the world level. These studies serve to combat many of the arguments raised by Heinrich (2013) – on this, also see Mage (2013).…”

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confidence: 99%

Military spending and economic development: A theoretical note

Watterton

2023

Human Geography

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Eisenhower once highlighted the growing undemocratic influence of the ‘military-industrial-complex’ (1961) and the enormous opportunity cost associated with it (1953). Since the late-1990s, military spending around the world has been growing but, despite its overall significance, research on it has not followed suit. There remains no consensus on the economic effects of military spending, both in the sense of economic dynamism and whether it ‘crowds-out’ other forms of state spending, like welfare spending. Understanding such primarily depends on how the relationship between the economy and the state is theoretically understood. The present paper outlines in brief three theoretical schools on the state-economy nexus, ultimately arguing that state-backed military spending should be situated as a countertendency to the ‘law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall’.

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Invisible Leviathan: Marx’s Law of Value in the Twilight of Capitalism

Cited by 8 publications

References 114 publications

Marxism and revisionism in the world today

Marxism and revisionism in the world today

Identity Politics: A Marxist View

Military spending and economic development: A theoretical note

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