Showing papers in "Economy and Society in 1974"

South Africa: Capital Accumulation and Violence

Abstract: This article analyses the conditions of capital accumulation in South Africa, and seeks to explain the authoritarian and racially discriminatory features of the South African social structure in terms of (a) the specific historical processes of change (mercantile colonial conquest, primitive accumulation in mining and farming) and (b) the specific features of contemporary capitalism, notably the capital-intensive structure of industry. The authoritarianism embodied, for example, in the extra-economic coercion of black labour is seen as reflecting the circumstances of the struggle between capital and labour under conditions where capital-labour contradictions exist alongside the contradiction between South African capitalism and the ‘dependent’ societies it has preserved/recreated. The implications of this situation for strategies of socialist change are briefly evaluated.

The marginal pole of the economy and the marginalized labour force

Abstract: The paper proposes the concept of ‘marginal pole’ of the economy to characterise a new level of Latin American economic activity, which has a precarious relationship with the basic means of production controlled by the dominant levels of the economy as a whole. The ‘marginalised labour force’ employed here is a distinct new sector within the working population. It is argued that the concept of ‘marginalised labour force’ is more appropriate in this case than that of ‘industrial reserve army’ and enables certain consequences of marginalisation to be analysed.

Long-distance exchange and the formation of the State: the case of the Abron kingdom of Gyaman

Abstract: In the view of several present-day historians and economists, including Samir Amin, Catherine Coquery and Yves Person, the structure of precolonial African socio-economic formations may be described as the combination of peasant communities organising their labour without outside interference, and of warrior aristocracies basing their wealth and power on their control of long-distance trade. In my own view, this picture underestimates the economic and social role played in many formations by captives: in Gyaman and in Ashanti, it is essentially captives who produce the surplus from which the aristocracy's means of domination are drawn; and long-distance trade functions to allow the aristocracy to ‘realise’ the surplus product extracted from its captives' labour, not directly to obtain resources for itself in the form of rights or tolls. These social formations are therefore constituted by the conjunction of a kin-based tributary mode of production based on the exploitation of slave labour. In conclusion, ...

Marxian epistemology and the transformation problem

Abstract: A discussion and statement of Marx's solution to the problem of deriving prices from embodied labour values, i.e. the transformation problem. A critique of the inconsistencies inherent in Marx's solution, and a citation of some of Marx's own doubts about the adequacy of his solution. A consideration of Bortkiewicz's solution and certain objections to it. Presentation of a modified Bortkiewicz-type solution. Extension of the problem from formal economics to epistemology. Discussion of the epistemological status of such concepts as value, price of production, and the general rate of profit. An interpretation of Marx's epistemology and its relation to the transformation problem. Discussion of the labour theory of value in the light of the previous results.

War and servitude in Segou

Abstract: This article discusses the problem of ‘slavery’ in the social system of Segou, Mali. The analysis considers the concept of jon on the axis jon-horon (captive—free man) elucidating the ambiguities of the two descriptions on the scale with slave and king at the extremes. The concept is discussed with reference to the organization of production, distribution and exchange; the contrast between state and private ownership and the nature of dependence are also examined. Jonya (the condition of jon) is related to the state and an attempt is made to determine whether it should be seen as a form of slavery or, on the contrary, as a form of public service; the warrior jon's political power is a significant element of the analysis.

The theory of the state and politics: a central paradox of Marxism

Abstract: It is commonplace to observe that while Marx saw the withering away of the state as necessary for communism, the state in ‘Communist’ societies has done anything but wither away. This seems to indicate a paradox in the Marxian theory, whose resolution would probably tend to undermine the theory itself. It is, however, argued that the expansion of the state in ‘Communist’ societies is only apparently contradictory to the Marxian theory, and that the theory in fact provides the basis for a most adequate account of this phenomenon. But the theory does have a genuinely paradoxical quality which lies in the tension between the political and its social basis, in the socialist movement. The fundamental component of the Marxian theory is its demonstration of the dependence of the state and politics on society; the problem then is the very status of ‘the political’ as a category, and especially the meaning of a ‘marxist politics’. Marxism itself demonstrates that the very existence of ‘politics in the direct and n...

Cultural resistance and religious legitimacy in colonial Algeria

Abstract: Starting from a specific historical example, that of colonial Algeria, the paper seeks to examine religious movements which play a political role. Too often such movements have been viewed either as being only political or as utilising religion simply as a mask. It is argued here that religious movements having apparent political functions benefit (to the extent that they are religious) from being studied in contrast to other non-religious movements having similar or comparable functions in the same society at the same time (or in other societies with which comparison would appear justified). It is only in this way that one can see how the relation between the political and religious fields function. It is also in this way alone that we are able to see at what price (that of the relative autonomy of the religious field) the objective domination and manipulation of the religious by the political comes about. In studying societies which claim to be Islamic, it is particularly important to break with orienta...

Remarks on the theoretical significance of Marx's Grundrisse

Abstract: In recent years much play has been made with the significance of the Grundrisse for the reinterpretation of Marx's thought. The text has been represented as a vindication of those who have treated Marx's work as a relatively direct development from the early writings of 1843 and 1844, and a rebuttal of those who have sought to establish that Marx's later works constitute a radically distinct project from that of his youth, the two projects being separated by an epistemological break. This paper examines the theoretical structure of the Grundrisse, the kind of concepts that it contains and the objects constructed by these concepts. I argue that the result of such an examination demonstrates that the latter of the two positions outlined here is the correct one. The Grundrisse is shown to be an incoherent, transitional work, and its ambiguities an index of the presence of a number of theoretical obstacles.

Ricardo and the conditions of classical political economy

Abstract: The existence of contradictions within the Ricardian system is by now well established. It remains, however, to consider the necessity of those contradictions. In this essay certain of the central paradoxes of Ricardian economics are treated not in terms of the deficiencies of Ricardo's analytical ability, the lack of proper ‘tools’, or the presence of ideological blinders, but in terms of their intrinsic necessity within the Ricardian conception of the capitalist economic system as a whole. We indicate how Ricardo's own insight into the functioning of the capitalist economy drives him to adopt principles of value which he himself considers to be in conflict. In light of this discussion it is possible to approach more closely to a determination of the essential character of Ricardian economics and of classical political economy as a whole.

The Freudian Concept of Representative (Repräsentanz)

Abstract: (1974). The Freudian Concept of Representative (Reprasentanz) Economy and Society: Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 18-40.