economics
Articles on economics and political economy.
Confronting the crisis of 'fordism': Italian debates around social transition - Steve Wright
Steve Wright's in-depth look at views of the Italian workerists on the working class response to Fordism and its effects on class composition.
[First published in 'Reconstruction' #6 (Summer 1995/96)]
Food, famine and the international crisis - Harry Cleaver
This article by Harry Cleaver describes the technological development and introduction of high-yield grains into South-East Asia as a method of controlling class struggle.
Since it runs to over 25000 words, we present it here in its original online format of PDF (270kb).
Money in the World Crisis
MONEY IN THE WORLD CRISIS:
The New Basis of Capitalist Power
Christian Marazzi
Value, Labour and Negativity
Value, labour and negativity
Author: Arthur, Christopher J Source: Capital & Class 15-39 no. 73 (Spring 2001): p. 15-39 ISSN: 0309-8168 Number: 70073390 Copyright: Copyright Conference of Socialist Economists Spring 2001
The Wage System
FREEDOM PAMPHLETS No. 1.
(New Edition. 1920.)
THE WAGE SYSTEM
BY PETER KROPOTKIN.
Proposed Communist Settlement: a New Colony for Tyneside or Wearside
Proposed Communist Settlement: A New Colony for Tyneside or Wearside
by Peter Kropotkin
The Newcastle Daily Chronicle: February 20, 1985, p4.
Reprinted in Small Communal Experiments and Why They Fail
A number of Communists resident in the North of England have decided to found a settlement somewhat on the lines of Mr. Herbert Mill's home colony at Starnthwaite, but to be conducted on Communistic principles. The Promoters of the scheme are in negotiation for various parcels of land, but have not yet come to a final decision as to the locality in which their camp shall be pitched. We are, however, informed that, unless unforeseen and unanticipated difficulties present themselves at the eleventh hour, the colony will be established either on Tyneside or Wearside, probably the latter. Prince Kropotkin having been invited to become the treasurer of the fund, has returned the following answer:
The Capitalist System
THE CAPITALIST SYSTEM
by Michael Bakunin
This pamphlet is an excerpt from The Knouto-Germanic Empire and the Social Revolution and included in The Complete Works of Michael Bakunin under the title "Fragment." Parts of the text were originally translated into English by G.P. Maximoff for his anthology of Bakunin's writings, with missing paragraphs translated by Jeff Stein from the Spanish edition, Diego Abad de Santillan, trans. (Buenos Aires 1926) vol. III, pp. 181-196.
Marx's crisis theory as a theory of class struggle - Harry Cleaver
Marx's Crisis Theory as a Theory of Class Struggle
Peter Bell and Harry Cleaver
The preface is available below, or the full article may be viewed as a PDF
Preface (2002)
Theories of crisis have always been intensely political. Different views of capitalist development and breakdown have always shaped, and been shaped by, political strategies. In the early and mid-1970s the onset of a crisis of Keynesian policy, and hence theory, brought on by an international cycle of working class struggle, led to a widespread preoccupation with "crisis theory" in both capitalist and anti-capitalist circles. While capitalist theorists struggled to find ways to restore control and accumulation, the Left gloated and said, once again, that it was all inevitable and dusted off a variety of old theories to prove it. This essay was written as the first chapter of a book intended as an intervention in the debates of those times.
Municipalization: Community Ownership of the Economy
Murray Bookchin's Libertarian Municipalism is an attempt to bring up to date the historical legacy of those directly democratic organs of self-management that were thrown up in times of struggle by the working class. It suggests the potential of moving towards a non-market economy with no separation between economic and political democracy.
Municipalization: Community Ownership of the Economy
By: Murray Bookchin
This article originally appeared in Green Perspectives No. 2 February 1986.
Value, Price and Profit - Karl Marx
Speech by Marx to the First International Working Men's Association, June 1865
