|
Das Kapital, Volume I
''Capital. A Critique of Political Economy. Volume I: The Process of Production of Capital'' (german: Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie Erster Band. Buch I: Der Produktionsprocess des Kapitals) is the first of three treatises that make up ''Das Kapital'', a critique of political economy by the German philosopher and economist Karl Marx. First published on 14 September 1867, Volume I was the product of a decade of research and redrafting, and is the only part of ''Das Kapital'' to be completed during Marx's life. It focuses on the aspect of capitalism that Marx refers to as the capitalist mode of production, or the way in which capitalism organizes society to produce goods and services. The first two parts of the work deal with the fundamentals of classical economics, including the nature of value, money, and commodities. In these sections, Marx defends and expands upon the labor theory of value as advanced by Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Starting with the next thr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Labor Theory Of Value
The labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of " socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian economics, although it originally appeared in the theories of earlier classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and later in anarchist economics. Smith saw the price of a commodity in terms of the labor that the purchaser must expend to buy it, which embodies the concept of how much labor a commodity, a tool for example, can save the purchaser. The LTV is central to Marxist theory, which holds that the working class is exploited under capitalism, and dissociates price and value. However, Marx did not refer to his own theory of value as a "labour theory of value". Orthodox neoclassical economics rejects the LTV, using a theory of value based on subjective preferences. The revival in interpretation of Marx known as the also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Technological Unemployment
Technological unemployment is the loss of jobs caused by technological change. It is a key type of structural unemployment. Technological change typically includes the introduction of labour-saving "mechanical-muscle" machines or more efficient "mechanical-mind" processes (automation), and humans' role in these processes are minimized. Just as horses were gradually made obsolete as transport by the automobile and as labourer by the tractor, humans' jobs have also been affected throughout modern history. Historical examples include artisan weavers reduced to poverty after the introduction of mechanized looms. During World War II, Alan Turing's Bombe machine compressed and decoded thousands of man-years worth of encrypted data in a matter of hours. A contemporary example of technological unemployment is the displacement of retail cashiers by self-service tills and cashierless stores. That technological change can cause short-term job losses is widely accepted. The view that i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wage Slavery
Wage slavery or slave wages refers to a person's dependence on wages (or a salary) for their livelihood, especially when wages are low, treatment and conditions are poor, and there are few chances of upward mobility. The term is often used by critics of work to criticize the exploitation of labor and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital, particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, such as in sweatshops, and the latter is described as a lack of workers' self-management, fulfilling job choices and leisure in an economy.. The criticism of social stratification covers a wider range of employment choices bound by the pressures of a hierarchical society to perform otherwise unfulfilling work that deprives humans of their "species character" not only under threat of extreme poverty and starvation, but also of social stigma and status diminution... Historically, many socialist organisations and ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proletariat
The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philosophy considers the proletariat to be exploited under capitalism, forced to accept meager wages in return for operating the means of production, which belong to the class of business owners, the bourgeoisie. Marx argued that this oppression gives the proletariat common economic and political interests that transcend national boundaries, impelling them to unite and take over power from the capitalist class, and eventually to create a communist society free from class distinctions. Roman Republic and Empire The constituted a social class of Roman citizens who owned little or no property. The name presumably originated with the census, which Roman authorities conducted every five years to produce a register of citizens and their p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Class Conflict
Class conflict, also referred to as class struggle and class warfare, is the political tension and economic antagonism that exists in society because of socio-economic competition among the social classes or between rich and poor. The forms of class conflict include direct violence such as wars for resources and cheap labor, assassinations or revolution; indirect violence such as deaths from poverty and starvation, illness and unsafe working conditions; and economic coercion such as the threat of unemployment or the withdrawal of investment capital (capital flight); or ideologically, by way of political literature. Additionally, political forms of class warfare include legal and illegal lobbying, and bribery of legislators. The social-class conflict can be direct, as in a dispute between labour and management such as an employer's industrial lockout of their employees in effort to weaken the bargaining power of the corresponding trade union; or indirect such as a workers' sl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economic Growth
Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate of increase in the real gross domestic product, or real GDP. Growth is usually calculated in real terms – i.e., inflation-adjusted terms – to eliminate the distorting effect of inflation on the prices of goods produced. Measurement of economic growth uses national income accounting. Since economic growth is measured as the annual percent change of gross domestic product (GDP), it has all the advantages and drawbacks of that measure. The economic growth-rates of countries are commonly compared using the ratio of the GDP to population (per-capita income). The "rate of economic growth" refers to the geometric annual rate of growth in GDP between the first and the last year over a period of time. This growth rate represents the trend in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States, that occurred during the period from around 1760 to about 1820–1840. This transition included going from hand production methods to machines, new chemical manufacturing and iron production processes, the increasing use of steam power and water power, the development of machine tools and the rise of the mechanized factory system. Output greatly increased, and a result was an unprecedented rise in population and in the rate of population growth. Textiles were the dominant industry of the Industrial Revolution in terms of employment, value of output and capital invested. The textile industry was also the first to use modern production methods. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain, and many of the technological and architectural innovations were of British origin. By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world's leadi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Means Of Production
The means of production is a term which describes land, labor and capital that can be used to produce products (such as goods or services); however, the term can also refer to anything that is used to produce products. It can also be used as an abbreviation of the "means of production and distribution" which additionally includes the logistical distribution and delivery of products, generally through distributors, or as an abbreviation of the "means of production, distribution, and exchange" which further includes the exchange of distributed products, generally to consumers. This concept is used throughout fields of study including politics, economics, and sociology to discuss, broadly, the relationship between anything that can have productive use, its ownership, and the constituent social parts needed to produce it. Industrial production From the perspective of a firm, a firm uses its capital goods, which are also known as tangible assets as they are physical in nature. Unf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Capital Accumulation
Capital accumulation is the dynamic that motivates the pursuit of profit, involving the investment of money or any financial asset with the goal of increasing the initial monetary value of said asset as a financial return whether in the form of profit, rent, interest, royalties or capital gains. The aim of capital accumulation is to create new fixed and working capitals, broaden and modernize the existing ones, grow the material basis of social-cultural activities, as well as constituting the necessary resource for reserve and insurance. The process of capital accumulation forms the basis of capitalism, and is one of the defining characteristics of a capitalist economic system.''Capital'', Encyclopedia on Marxists.org: http://marxists.org/glossary/terms/c/a.htm#capital Definition The definition of capital accumulation is subject to controversy and ambiguities, because it could refer to: *a ''net addition'' to existing wealth *a ''redistribution'' of wealth. Most often, capi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bourgeoisie
The bourgeoisie ( , ) is a social class, equivalent to the middle or upper middle class. They are distinguished from, and traditionally contrasted with, the proletariat by their affluence, and their great cultural and financial capital. They are sometimes divided into a petty (), middle (), large (), upper (), and ancient () bourgeoisie and collectively designated as "the bourgeoisie". The bourgeoisie in its original sense is intimately linked to the existence of cities, recognized as such by their urban charters (e.g., municipal charters, town privileges, German town law), so there was no bourgeoisie apart from the citizenry of the cities. Rural peasants came under a different legal system. In Marxist philosophy, the bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization and whose societal concerns are the value of property and the preservation of capital to ensure the perpetuation of their economic supremacy in society. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relations Of Production
Relations of production (german: Produktionsverhältnisse, links=no) is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism and in ''Das Kapital''. It is first explicitly used in Marx's published book ''The Poverty of Philosophy'', although Marx and Engels had already defined the term in ''The German Ideology''. Some social relations are voluntary or freely chosen (a person chooses to associate with another person or a group). But other social relations are involuntary, i.e. people can be socially related, whether they like that or not, because they are part of a family, a group, an organization, a community, a nation etc. By "relations of production", Marx and Engels meant the sum total of social relationships that people ''must'' enter into in order to survive, to produce, and to reproduce their means of life. As people ''must'' enter into these social relationships, i.e. because participation in them is not voluntary, the to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
