Marxist political economy pdf

Is government not about protecting the organic rights of humans? Organic meaning not man created. Things like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Government is not the granter of rights, unless you believe in Kings and dictators. Rights are innate to being human given by our Creator. With these rights, we can choose to do what we want in our lives. Read about conscious capitalism. What about a company like Whole foods market, people can work there?

How is the world different today? I am not an idealist, but if the ideal world can exist, I am ok with that. I am realistic, I just say what I know about the different systems, both theoretically and practically. As for sharing, I have no problem with that. I could go to Philadelphia to do it, or to any poor country. I have shared a lot already. But sharing is not the only thing to be done. If I go around giving away all my belongings, it will only be a transfer of the poverty status from them to me.

By the way, communism is about the common ownership of natural resources, means of production etc, not necessarily personal items. Wait, what? Capitalism about helping others?? There is a confusion here. Capitalism has as purpose the accumulation of capital, no matter how much disparity there is. If you want to talk about conscious capitalism, this is one step towards socialism. Where will their cheap labor and cheap material come from then? They will probably be reduced to small and average businesses, and socialism does not oppose that.

You have to know that due to super exploitation in the South, prices and salaries are high in the North. And maybe he somehow played with contracts and the market not saying he is dishonest, not all manipulations are made because one is nasty. I think you already gave the roles of a government as Jefferson said it. Who is the creator you are talking about? If you are talking about the Bible character, he is also a king and a dictator.

Selling food there is not necessarily bad, specially as they propose an alternative to the GMOs… but guess what? They heavily break their rules. Organic food is generally good. But how did they produce it? On what land? With what equipment? Was the metal, rubber, plastic of this equipment taken from poor countries? Were the fertilizers taken or produced in bad conditions?

So many questions we can ask. I am not saying we have to avoid work because of the system, or nothing will go well, but we have to be conscious and willing to change the system. Economics is a positive sum game. Under the Marxist model it is a zero sum game, one person loses for another to win. But life is always moving foward and developing and economics at a arms length is a win-win.

How do you define exploitation? Give me a specific example in the USA how people en masse are being exploited.

Further, what is your prescription to end this? I do believe you are fairly selfless and share when you can. I do not doubt your personal integrity after reading what you wrote. You have sincere compassion for others.

However, I how a society achieve justice, the ultimate societal good, is the question. I believe if you maximize liberty in a society with some restraints, our civilization would benefit, all people. The reason is I do believe people are innately good and do not need to be herded like cattle to happiness.

Accounting and consulting you make a lot of money based on skills. I pay my taxes, never fired anyone, I think I treat people fair and try to promote good in people. My father, worked for 50 years and never fired anyone. How is all this exploitation. Its numbers on a balance sheet and connecting IT systems. I would not work for any companies I thought were even borderline morally questionable like tobacco or defense contractors.

I also sell real estate. I help people fine homes. I also write apps, how is that harmful? People in developing counties do suffer for many reason, mostly they do not have opportunities of free markets, and it is the responsibility for what is given to us to help those how have not, but not by tyranny,but though creative capitalism and charity. Just look at the difference between North and South Korea and there is your answer.

I posted a text but forgot to put it as a reply to yours. My prescription would be communism. No more inequality, no more conflict. Have you ever been to a post-communist world? It is grey and drab and you notice that there is an absence of entertaining elements like books, phones, computers, travel opportunities, vacations, swimming pools and things that are fun in life. Further the clothing tends not to be as interesting or stylish, wearing the same underwear several times a week with no shampoo is not fun..

You can pursue intellectual ideals arts and literature and music. Boredom is one of the worst things in life. The human spirit in the human mind craves stimulation and to be reaching for higher loftier thin if you restrict liberties guaranteed human unhappiness happiness decreases in human unhappiness increases. This is the great flaw of communism it is very one-dimensional in its understanding of the human psyche.

In the United States we also had a form of communism early on period when the pilgrims arrived they shared land on the comments. For example on Boston Commons everyone could put their animals to graze. Naturally everybody try to maximize their profit and the Commons were over grace period if material wealth with shared no person had an incentive to do more than they need to. It goes beyond the idea of providing material goods at a basic level you want to be productive and creative in your endeavors.

And this was what was lacking in the initial years of the colonists. People starved until they jettisoned the idea of communal sharing. We each have different needs. My neighbors only eat packaged food and sit in front of their TV all day. We on the other hand prefer to grow our own food and we often are surfing and traveling and hiking. One is not better than the other, each person has but has a different conception of how they want to live their lives. Some people that want to travel the world and live in different countries every few years.

I have an older friend who likes to go and fish and hunt and trap while another one prefers to spend his time reading books in the library. So we each have a different conception of what life means and what is the meaning of life. So I admire your idea of trying to help humanity, but to maximize humanities happiness it does not equate with material Equalization. The role of government is not to make everyone equal. What is to allow people to choose their own life. You would not like it if your parents put your life on a roadmap and determined your limits and crush your dreams.

This dialogue can be tiring sometimes. At first, some people came, made ad hominem attacks then vanished. Anyway, I had some of the misconceptions you are expressing in your latest comment. I am not sure of the definition of equality in marxist terms but it is not the above. I think it has something to do with the abolition of classes and equal access to the resources and products. Why did many countries accept the Declaration of Human rights which makes us equal?

The alienation from the self is a consequence of being a mechanistic part of a social class, which condition estranges a person from his and her humanity.

The theoretic basis of alienation, within the capitalist mode of production, is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine his or her life and destiny, when deprived of the right to think conceive of himself as the director of his actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define relationships with other people; and to own the things and use the value of the goods and services, produced with his or her labour.

Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realised human being, as an economic entity, he or she is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, in order to extract from the worker the maximum amount of surplus value, in the course of business competition among industrialists. You see? And communists want the end of alienation, they want the true fulfillment of all individuals. Am I right there? In communism, the means of productions of the essential goods to sastisfy those needs are held in common, instead of being owned by a few while the rest of the people has to sell their labour for food.

Plus, with the general automatization of production, one will really have the choice to work or have fun in whatever the domain wanted. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening,criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

If this is not slavery, what is it? Now, in the US, Canada, Europe and some other places, we can see healthcare programs, 8-hour work days, public education etc. And some will use those to say capitalism is not that bad. In fact, those are socialist elements added in those countries after numerous strikes and protests for each of them. The strikers were often beaten, killed, otherwise intimidated, called communists, bolsheviks, etc.

Because asking for decent ways of life is so bad… In fact, capitalism was and still is a real hell, with hour work days and more , child labour, dangerous conditions of work, meager salaries etc.

Now things seem to be better, while those conditions still exist in the third world and even in some places in the first world. See Imperialism leninist viewpoint.

By those means, those leaving in the first world with all the abundance say that capitalism is great, while in fact, almost everything you have there is a product of exploitation.

The thirld world, China included, is enslaved to give high standardards of life in the North. See again what I said about super profits and super exploitation.

This is a huge confirmation bias. Unfortunately, it is hard to avoid all confirmation bias but this one is terrible. First of all, one has to remember that the success of capitalist countries is built on the failure of other countries that provide a big part of the work and resources. They were isolated, sometimes invaded, suffered and still suffer embargoes, but they still managed to get everybody somewhere to live, something the USA has yet to do. They managed to provide free healthcare, free education, work stability… despite being ravaged from time to time with droughts, invasions for example, Hitler invading the USSR, causing millions of deaths and huge damage , other attacks interventions in Cuba and other hardships.

If you complain about a certain boredom in socialist nations, are you going to cry for capitalist third world countries were people live in slums, get no adequate healthcare, are illiterate, work for survival…?

Third thing. I understand a system may need time to be successful. The socialist countries often had major failures at the beginning but quickly improved their conditions despite hardships. What are the excuses of capitalism? After more than years, things are not pink at all. Is it because it is still a beginner or is because its essence is depriving the masses to concentrate wealth? The thing is that, in capitalism, such liberty is possible for a few only.

In communism, for all. One last thing. Marx and Engels also talked about that. But the communism to be created is not primitive communism.

It is based on science, automation of the production and the abundance of goods, not primitive farming or powerless dependence on rain. And the success of the colonists later was based on theft of land, genocide, slavery and other forms of exploitation and cruelty. Is it that good? This is hugely false. No books? All those scientists building the Soyuz and sending Gagarin in space were working with no books? They were kids and students before, they had to have books.

There was censorship and propaganda, but saying there were no books is an awful thing. It is better to live in a grey decent appartment block than in a colorful slum. Julian, I am Cuban, 52 years old.

Born and grown in the so called socioeconomic communism. I am not going to enter into details, enough facts have been given in the discussion. The only thing I want to state is that it is a cruel way of forcing people to do a set of pre-arranged, unchallenged and unchangeable to do it way of agonizing living. Whatever you see or they show that look great is mere fake and hypocrisy.

It is just the ego, the power love, the need of feeling needed, and all those sort of things. It is a complete Machiavelli manipulation of oneself sole, mind, spirit. You are not yourself, you are a created someone. Actually and possibly you will never know who you are or could possibly being in other circumstances.

I am not exaggerating, Im not fanatic, I just have seen, feel, taste it and I can assure you with all respect that you are, like many in the world, blinded and unable even to think in the possibility that your opinions are completely mistaken, wrong and worse of all, very dangerous. It is a free country. If you want to make money or live off the grid or be a surfer or invent something you can.

So what do you mean by this? It does not matter if you are from Europe or elsewhere in ancestory, we had an African American President for example. You can find arguments for exploration and imperialistic motives if you look at anything, if that is the way you want to paint your vision.

However, I think America is the land of opportunity that is why so many people want to migrate here. Socialism and communism suffer from so many theoretical and practical deficiencies, advocating communism today reveals a real lack of education on the subject of political economy.

There is absolutely no evidence that assertion is true — and there is no theoretical reason to think it might ever be true among human beings. One woman may say something that offends another woman, causing resentment, dislike, and non-cooperation. One man may hit another man to gain power over his victim — even if the power is psychological manipulation or the infliction of psychic pain.

There is conflict among infants and toddlers in play areas, long before any of the little tykes have any concepts about money, work, wealth, class, or relations between capital and labor. Among humans conflict is endemic. The notion that equalizing wealth is all that is required to end conflict is fanciful thinking at best. In truth, the communist view promises conflict, and indeed promises war, killing, and oppression. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.

The mind that would kill his neighbor because the neighbor had a swimming pool, drove a nicer car or ran a convenience store, is a mind we can never trust to lead a peaceful conflict-free society.

Logically the problem is obvious. The neoliberal capitalist restructuring has embodied a wide project for the restoration of capitalist profitability predicated upon a dramatic shift in the balance of power from labor to capital. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri summarized these dynamics with particular effectiveness in their book Assembly , p. These are the years when neoliberalism was born.

It is in the context of this broader realignment of social power in late-capitalist societies that a materialistic analysis of punishment must situate its contemporary critique of the penal field.

Such critique must then be able to take into account not only the measurable dynamics of the labor market i. In order to outline some potential implications of the theoretical shift proposed here, we need to return to the concept of less eligibility as the logic shaping the direction and the intensity of the relationship between penal policies and economic cycles. If, on the one hand, the average living standards for the working class are a reflection of the average value of its labor, which in turn is largely determined by cyclical fluctuations in the labor market, then, on the other hand, the overall situation of that workforce—its position within existing structures of class, racial, and gender inequality—is not an automatic consequence of labor market dynamics.

Instead, it is shaped by a range of cultural, political, and institutional factors that, in a relation of structural affinity with economic processes, contribute to defining the overall social value of the capitalist labor force and of the social groups that fill its ranks.

In this perspective, the social value of labor would result from the ongoing interaction between economic structures i. In other words, the overall situation of marginalized social classes is determined by their place in the economic structure as much as by their position in the moral economy of capitalist social formations see also Sayer, At the same time, a broad reconfiguration of governmental strategies of social regulation—such as the transition from welfare to workfare, the adoption of restrictive immigration laws, the increasing commitment to market deregulation, and the ongoing commodification of public resources like health care, housing, education, and even punishment—has eroded the postwar compromise between capital and labor, further fracturing late-capitalist societies along lines of class, race, ethnicity, and national origin.

Finally, in the field of cultural signification, the conservative hold on public debates about socioeconomic inequality, reinforced by periodic moral panics about street crime, immigration, drugs, welfare, etc. In this direction, a renewed materialist critique of the punitive turn should of course emphasize once again the crucial role played by contemporary penal practices—especially in the aftermath of the punitive turn of the s—in disciplining the postindustrial labor force to accept the new levels of exploitation, precariousness, and vulnerability imposed by the neoliberal regime of capitalist accumulation.

But it should also elaborate a culturally grounded materialist critique of the symbolic dimensions of penality, emphasizing how hegemonic constructions of social deservingness and un-deservingness, particularly those sanctioned by the state through its sovereign power to punish, provide discursive legitimacy to a regime of capitalist accumulation rooted in the ongoing devaluation of the poor and of their labor.

Further Reading Davis, A. Are prisons obsolete? Gilmore, R. Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California. Berkeley: University of California Press. Greenberg, D. Crime and capitalism: Readings in Marxist criminology. The political economy of punishment today: Visions, debates, and challenges.

London, England: Routledge. Platt, T. Legacies of radical criminology in the United States. Roberts, A. Gendered states of punishment and welfare: Feminist political economy, primitive accumulation and the law. Schept, J. Progressive punishment: Job loss, jail growth, and the neoliberal logic of carceral expansion. Vogel, R. Capitalism and incarceration revisited. Monthly Review, 55 4 , 38— References Alexander, M. The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness.

Barker, V. The politics of imprisonment: How the democratic process shapes the way America punishes offenders. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Beckett, K. Making crime pay: Law and order in contemporary American politics. The politics of injustice: Crime and punishment in America. Governing social marginality: Welfare, incarceration, and the transformation of state policy. Bonefeld, W. The strong state and the free economy. Bonger, W. Criminality and economic conditions.

Boston, MA: Little, Brown. Box, S. Economic crisis and the rising prisoner population in England and Wales. Crime and Social Justice, 17, 20— Braithwaite, J. The political economy of punishment. Buckley Eds. Incarcerating the crisis: Freedom struggles and the rise of the neoliberal state. Cavadino, M. Penal systems: A comparative approach. Cheliotis, L. Journal of Classical Sociology, 11 4 , — Punitive inclusion: The political economy of irregular migration in the margins of Europe. European Journal of Criminology, 14 1 , 78— Melossi, M.

Brandariz Eds. The moral psychology of penal populism. Jackson Eds. Chiricos, T. Unemployment and punishment: An empirical assessment. Criminology, 29 4 , — Labor surplus and punishment: A review and assessment of theory and evidence.

Social Problems, 39 4 , — Clark, B. The evolution of economic systems: Varieties of capitalism in the global economy. Dardot, P. The new way of the world: On neoliberal society. London, England: Verso. De Giorgi, A. Re-thinking the political economy of punishment: Perspectives on post-Fordism and penal politics. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing. Immigration control, post-Fordism, and less eligibility: A materialist critique of the criminalization of immigration across Europe.

De Haan, W. The politics of redress: Crime, punishment and penal abolition. London, England: Unwin Hyman. Capital resurgent: Roots of the neoliberal revolution. Nickel and Dimed: On not getting by in America. Ehrenreich, B. Global woman: Nannies, maids, and sex workers in the new economy. Eisner, M. Cycles of political control: The case of Canton Zurich, — European Journal of Political Research, 15, — Foucault, M.

Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason. Original work published Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. London, England: Penguin. Security, territory, population. New York, NY: Picador. The punitive society. Lectures at the College de France — London, England: Palgrave MacMillan. Galster, G. The US criminal justice system: Unemployment and the severity of punishment. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 22 2 , — Garland, D.

Punishment and modern society: A study in social theory. The culture of control: Crime and social order in contemporary society.

Godefroy, T. Changements economiques et repression penale. Penal sanctions in Poland: A test of alternative models. Social Problems, 28 2 , — Gustafson, K. Cheating welfare: Public assistance and the criminalization of poverty. Hall, P. Varieties of capitalism. Hall, S. Policing the crisis: Mugging, law and order and the state. London, England: MacMillan. While Adam Smith believed capitalism was motivated by enlightened self-interest, people create value to satiate demand.

When people pursue enlightened self-interest society as a whole benefit in ways that could never be imagined or engineered. Marx has a different view. The owner of the production could claim surplus value because of legal protection. The ruling regime granted capitalist property rights. If we understand what Marx believed was wrong with capitalism we can create a better capitalism model. Marx believed a capitalist ideology was created because society is brainwashed to attribute value judgments on things that do not matter.

He makes some points relevant to his time and important to continue to improve our time. Some ideas he had was free education, free libraries, public transportation and roads, progressive income tax. These ideas have all come to fruition and as capitalism evolves in our mixed economy more of his ideas are ironically become manifest through capitalism. Marx is a conflict theory because one group of society is not in competition but conflict and oppression with another group in society.

It sociology is one model that is not common. More common is cooperation, competition or isolation. Class conflict was the basis of his theory. He did not envision the totalitarian oppression of Communism, which to the Soviets was seen as a transitional state towards the path to Utopia. He wanted to create an equal society in terms of economic opportunity to actualize their lives through intellectual endeavors.

In the context of his time, Marx was writing about, a transition from feudalism to industrialization. During feudalism, people had rights to have their own animals and farm in the commons. However, with the passage of the Enclosure Acts in the 18th century in England, land ownership and use became restrictive and migration to the cities limited workers to factory work for making a means of employment.

In the factories, factory workers were employed at substance wages and children were used as cheap labor. The classes were the factory owners or the Bourgeoisie and the workers or the proletariat. The capitalist system is based on a system that encourages inequality. Through education of the proletariat and eventual revolution that would over thought the system, a new system where all people were treated equally. Further, the capital and businesses were community-owned, this system was called communism.

It was the abolition of private property. Marx used Hegelian logic, dialectical materialism in his theory. In another twist of irony, in one sense Marx was the first hyper consumer, as all that exists in the world was material, rather than spiritual transcendence and meaning. Therefore, his system of happiness util maximization was based on satiation through material equality and intellectual pursuits, not a soulful transcendence.

Nothing is more useful than water: but it will purchase scarce any thing; scarce any thing can be had in exchange for it. A diamond , on the contrary, has scarce any value in use; but a very great quantity of other goods may frequently be had in exchange for it — Adam Smith.

Value is not determined by labor input or any objective measure but by supply and demand, it is subjective, whatever value people ascribe value to it. I personally live semi-off the grid or at least off the matrix by growing my own food and creating my own businesses. You are not as indentured to your job and your career as you think. These are seen as the two social values that are parlayed to create a society that is just.

Justice as the ultimate good. They have to be balanced with both equality and freedom which are limited goods. You do not want the freedom to yell fire in a crowded movie if it was not true, or allow children to smoke. Nor do you want to make everyone so equal that it crushes the human spirit. Society as a whole should strive to maximize justice.

Marx had an inordinate emphasis on equality which brought societies which espouse his ideology to a lower social medium.