1st Edition
Class and Property in Marx's Economic Thought Exploring the Basis for Capitalism
This book presents the capitalist system as a function of the interaction of the three basic classes in the capitalist social formation. Through this, it shows how the corresponding conflicts and clashes of interests between those classes – industrial capitalists, wage labourers and landed proprietors – are unavoidable for understanding contemporary economic structures.
Analysing these economic structures in relation to the forms of property ownership, as well as the typical processes of production connected with them, the author points out how Karl Marx’s theory of the capitalist social formation is closely connected with the emergence and existence of a national money market. At the same time, the book places a special emphasis on Marx’s theory of ground rent and modern landed property, an aspect misinterpreted by many authors; and through an evaluation of the most important Marxian categories regarding the analysis of the world market and its development, further emphasis is placed on the concept of differences in labour intensity between nations. This evaluation illustrates how the main categories of capital, wage labour and landed property acquire a completely different internal relation in poor countries compared to Western capitalist societies.
Class and Property in Marx's Economic Thought aims at exposing a method for analysing contemporary capitalism through focusing on the basic relations of population groups in the capitalist social formation. It will be of interest to students and researchers within the field of economics, as well as other social sciences.
Introduction, Chapter 1. Structure and Transitions of Capital, Chapter 2. Historical and Conceptual Transition: Dual Sublation of Simple Reproduction, Prelude to Chapters 3 and 4, Chapter 3. Karl Marx’s Theory of Ground Rent: Historical Elements in Economic Interplay – Part 1: The Concept of Rent in General, Chapter 4. Karl Marx’s Theory of Ground Rent: Historical Elements in Economic Interplay – Part 2: Rent Structure and Capitalist Price System, Chapter 5. Modes of Production on the World Market, Appendices, Appendix 1: On Fixed Capital, Appendix 2: On Gold Digging, Bibliography
Biography
Jørgen Sandemose is Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo, Norway, where he was made Magister Artium in philosophy (with a dissertation on concept formation in Hegel and Marx) in 1973, supported by a full candidatus magisterii exam from 1971. In addition to his academic career, he has worked for fifteen years in the chemico-metallic industry and has held positions of trust in local and national Norwegian trade unions.
In 1975 he published the monograph Ricardo, Marx og Sraffa (published in separate editions in Denmark, Norway and Sweden), where he exposed Sraffian mistakes related to Marx’s theory of the numéraire and the "transformation problem". In English, he has published essays on the relation between Sraffa and Wittgenstein and on Marx’s method in economic science.
