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Abstract Labour
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 exchange value, economically valuable worktime versus human labour as a particular activity that has a specific Use value, useful effect within the (capitalist) mode of production. Overview *As economically valuable worktime, human labour is spent to add value to products or assets (thereby conserving their capital value, and/or transferring value from inputs to outputs). In this sense, labour is an activity which creates/maintains economic value pure and simple, which could be realized as a sum of money once labour's product is sold or acquired by a buyer. The value-creating ability of labour is most clearly visible when all labour is stopped. If all labour is withdrawn, the value of the capital assets worked with will normally deteriorate, and in the end, if labour is permanently withdrawn, nothing will b ...
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Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 pamphlet ''The Communist Manifesto'' and the four-volume (1867–1883). Marx's political and philosophical thought had enormous influence on subsequent intellectual, economic, and political history. His name has been used as an adjective, a noun, and a school of social theory. Born in Trier, Germany, Marx studied law and philosophy at the universities of Bonn and Berlin. He married German theatre critic and political activist Jenny von Westphalen in 1843. Due to his political publications, Marx became stateless and lived in exile with his wife and children in London for decades, where he continued to develop his thought in collaboration with German philosopher Friedrich Engels and publish his writings, researching in the British Mus ...
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Mathematics
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics with the major subdisciplines of number theory, algebra, geometry, and analysis, respectively. There is no general consensus among mathematicians about a common definition for their academic discipline. Most mathematical activity involves the discovery of properties of abstract objects and the use of pure reason to prove them. These objects consist of either abstractions from nature orin modern mathematicsentities that are stipulated to have certain properties, called axioms. A ''proof'' consists of a succession of applications of deductive rules to already established results. These results include previously proved theorems, axioms, andin case of abstraction from naturesome basic properties that are considered true starting points of ...
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Ben Fine
Ben Fine (born 1948) is Professor of Economics at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Background Fine was born in Coventry in 1948. One of six brothers, he and all but one other followed their father and studied mathematics at the University of Oxford. Fine graduated at the age of 20, and then was recruited by Sir James Mirrlees, completing an economics degree. He took his doctorate in economics at the London School of Economics, under the supervision of Amartya Sen, in 1974. He moved to the newly established economics department at Birkbeck, University of London, later working part-time as an industrial economist at the Greater London Council prior to its abolition. He was a member of the Social Science Research Committee of the UK’s Food Standards Agency, that met until 2016. Currently, Ben Fine is emeritus professor of economics at the Department of Economics at SOAS, University of London. He is on the Economists' Oversight Group of the Citize ...
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Kozo Uno
was a Japanese economist and is considered one of the most important theorists on the field of Marx's theory of value. His main work ''Principles of Political Economy'' was published in 1964. Among his scholars are Thomas T. Sekine and Makoto Itoh. Thought Uno based his work on a rigorously Hegelian reading of Marx's '' Capital''. This led him to his well-known conclusion that Marxian analysis had to be conducted at three separate levels: # The "pure" theory of Capital, freed from the complications of history – highly abstract exercises in dialectical logic on the basic, core dynamics of capitalist economy. # A "middle" level, which traces the general development of capitalism through distinct historical stages – mercantilism, classical liberalism Classical liberalism is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with especial emphasis on individual autonomy, lim ...
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Character Masks
In Marxist philosophy, a character mask (german: Charaktermaske) is a prescribed social role which conceals the contradictions of a social relation or order. The term was used by Karl Marx in published writings from the 1840s to the 1860s, and also by Friedrich Engels. It is related to the classical Greek concepts of mimesis (imitative representation using analogies) and prosopopoeia (impersonation or personification), and the Roman concept of persona, but also differs from them. Neo-Marxist and non-Marxist sociologists, philosophers and anthropologists have used character masks to interpret how people relate in societies with a complex division of labour, where people depend on trade to meet many of their needs. Marx's own notion of the character mask was not a fixed idea with a singular definition. Versus social masks As a psychological term, "character" is more common in continental Europe, while in Britain and North America the term "personality" is used in approximately ...
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Valorisation
In Marxism, the valorisation or valorization of capital is the increase in the value of capital assets through the application of value-forming labour in production. The German original term is "''Verwertung''" (specifically ''Kapitalverwertung'') but this is difficult to translate. The first translation of ''Capital'' by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, under Engels' editorship, renders "''Verwertung''" in different ways depending on the context, for example as "creation of surplus-value", "self-expanding value", "increase in value" and similar expressions. These renderings were also used in the US Untermann revised edition, and the Eden and Cedar Paul translation. It has also been wrongly rendered as "realisation of capital". In German, the general meaning of "Verwertung" is the productive use of a resource, and more specifically the use or application of something (an object, process or activity) so that it makes money, or generates value, with the connotation that the thing vali ...
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Money
Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment. Money was historically an emergent market phenomenon that possess intrinsic value as a commodity; nearly all contemporary money systems are based on unbacked fiat money without use value. Its value is consequently derived by social convention, having been declared by a government or regulatory entity to be legal tender; that is, it must be accepted as a form of payment within the boundaries of the country, for "all debts, public and private", in the case of the United States dollar. Contexts which erode public confidence, such as the circulation of counterfeit money or domestic hyperinflation, can cause good money to lose its value. ...
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Division Of Labour
The division of labour is the separation of the tasks in any economic system or organisation so that participants may specialise (specialisation). Individuals, organizations, and nations are endowed with, or acquire specialised capabilities, and either form combinations or trade to take advantage of the capabilities of others in addition to their own. Specialised capabilities may include equipment or natural resources as well as skills, and training and combinations of such assets acting together are often important. For example, an individual may specialise by acquiring tools and the skills to use them effectively just as an organization may specialise by acquiring specialised equipment and hiring or training skilled operators. The division of labour is the motive for trade and the source of economic interdependence. Historically, an increasing division of labour is associated with the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and the increasing complexity of ...
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Isaak Illich Rubin
Isaak Illich Rubin (russian: Исаа́к Ильи́ч Ру́бин; 12 June 1886, in Dvinsk, Russian Empire (now Latvia) – 27 November 1937, in Aktyubinsk, Kazakh SSR) was a Soviet Marxian economist. His main work '' Essays on Marx's Theory of Value'' was published in 1924. He was executed in 1937 during the course of the Great Purge, but his ideas have since been rehabilitated. Early life Born in to a wealthy Lithuanian Jewish family, Rubin became a revolutionary prior to the Revolution of 1905, when he was 19 years old. He first joined the Jewish Bund and later the Mensheviks. Rubin belonged to the Menshevik-Internationalists during the Russian Revolution, and was a member of its faction, which in 1920 opposed joining the now completely Russian Communist Party (b). The Bundists , who were leaning toward the Mensheviks, then left and founded the short-lived Social Democratic Union, of which Rubin served as secretary. From 1921 he too was subjected to repression and was ...
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Value-form
The value-form or form of value (german: Wertform) is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy. Marx's account of the value-form is differently adopted in later forms of Marxism, in the Frankfurt School and in post-Marxism. When social labor is split up into independent enterprises and organized capitalistically, its products take the form of an ensemble of ''commodities'' of diverse types, which face one another on the market. Production and exchange are governed by ideas and facts expressible in the forms like: * 20 yards of linen are worth one coat * 20 yards of linen have an equivalent in one coat * 20 yards of linen = one coat * 20 yards of linen cost $100 * The price of 20 yards of linen is $100 * 20 yards linen = $100 The formulae above are 'expressions of value' (''Wertausdruck''). ''Worth'', ''price'', and ''equivalent'' are said to be categories of bourgeois life. Items that enter on one side or the other, here ''linen'', ''coat'' and ''dollar'', are ...
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