political economy

it may be that the translators and editors of the latter work were of opinion that in view of the comprehensiveness of capital a publication of an english edition of the museau de la philosophie would be a work of supererogation or it may be that they thought a book so distinctly french as the capital may be said to be distinctly english and which was further exclusively a criticism of a work of proudhon's little known in england would have slight interest for english readers on the other hand the groundwork of the theories so fully elaborated in capital apart from its exhaustive analysis of the capitalist system of production and distribution will be found in in addition there are several subjects notably that of rend dealt with in this volume which are barely touched upon in the single book of capital which has been translated into english Marx's criticism of Proudhon's theory that, "...the time which is necessary to create a commodity indicates exactly its degree of utility, so that the things of which the production costs least time are the things which are the most immediately useful," has been matched by H. M. Heinemann's crushing refutation of the theory of final utility.

The subject of rent, too, has been fully dealt with by the latter in the same book, The Economics of Socialism, published, as the author says, in the hope of furnishing the rapidly increasing number of students of sociology with a concise and readable statement of the main theories of the scientific school of political economy founded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

End quote.

neither of these facts however necessarily detracts from the value of this older work of marx's on the question of rent after reviewing the ricardian theory and the many objections which present themselves to that theory hyndman says it seems therefore that a wider definition of the rent of land under capitalism is needed than that given by ricardo and the following is suggested rent of land is that proportion of the total net revenue which is paid to the landlord for the use of plots of land after the average profit on the capital embarked in developing such land has been deducted on the question of confiscating rent he says it would not affect the position of the working portion of the community unless the money so obtained were devoted to giving them more amusement to provide them with better surroundings and the like in fact the attack upon competitive rents is merely a capitalist attack that class sees a considerable income going off to a set of people who take no part in the direct exploitation of labor and its representatives are naturally anxious to stop this leakage as they consider it and to reduce their own taxation for public purposes by appropriating rent to the service of the state that is all very well for them on this point marx says we can understand such economists as mill chalbilliez hilditch and others demanding that rent should be handed over to the state to be used for the remission of taxation that is only the frank expression of the hate which the industrial capitalists feel for the landed proprietor who appears to him as a useless encumbrance a superfluity in the otherwise harmonious whole of the bourgeois production rent says marx results from the social relations in which exploitation is carried on it cannot result from the nature more or less fixed more or less durable of land rent proceeds from society and not from the soil the criticism of proudhon's appreciation of gold and silver as the first manifestation of this theory of constituted value should be interesting reading to those admirers of the french anarchists who yet profess their profound detestation of money and its function so too should his declaration against strikes and combinations of workmen in this we see once more how extremes meet this declaration of prudence would not be out of place in the organ of the liberty and property defence league in this matter of trade-union combination marx was scarcely accurate in his perception of its development he clearly did not foresee that the great english trade unions would become fossilized as it were and that instead of being a revolutionary force they would become a reactionary mass opposing the progress of a mere proletarian outside their ranks as they have done with the spread of socialist ideas among them however their exclusive character is being modified and they may even yet take that place in the revolutionary working-class movement which marx anticipated they would occupy given this change of attitude the development must inevitably be along the lines he predicted we are seeing in face of constantly united capital the maintenance of the association becoming more important and necessary for them than the maintenance of wages and further that the combinations of capital are forcing the trade unions to that point where association takes a political character it is scarcely necessary to point out that in this work written in eighteen forty seven some words have a meaning quite other than that which they bear to-day thus for instance the words socialists and socialism where they occur refer to the utopians who formulated theories of a social system independent of the industrial evolution and to these theories themselves in most cases the numerous quotations have been verified and reproduced in the original in some instances however they are summaries rather than the quotations and appear as translated a translation is necessarily an imperfect presentation of the thoughts ideas and conclusions of the author in this work i have endeavoured to adhere as closely as possible to the form and letter as well as to the spirit of the original and to this the indulgent reader is asked to ascribe such faults of language as would otherwise merit his censure h quelch preface the present work was written in the winter of eighteen forty six to eighteen forty seven at a time when marx had just elucidated the principles of his new historical and economic theory footnote la misre de la philosophie written in

value of proudhon long before proudhon but he is wrong in flattering himself with the belief that he was the first to discover it in any case the present work criticizes him with proudhon eighteen forty two at least in so far as this

work of his besides the communism of whiteley which it also contains however unconsciously anticipates in so far as modern socialism of no matter what tendency

otherwise it may be proceeds from bourgeois political economy it almost exclusively attaches itself to the theory of value of ricardo the two propositions which ricardo in eighteen seventeen put at the head of his first that the value of each commodity is only and solely determined by the quantity of labour exacted by its production and second that the product of the totality of social labour is shared between the three classes of landlords rent capitalists profit and labourers wages these two propositions had already in england afforded

material for socialist conclusions they had been deduced with so much clearness and profundity that this literature which has now almost

We'll talk about that.

And then we'll talk to Dana Boyd, the Jerry Gay professor of communication at Cornell University, who recently published an interesting paper called something like Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI.

We'll keep this next segment short today, but one thing we'll do in most episodes is talk about what's happening in the news.

I tell my students that learning to apply our mental tools to what's happening in current technology topics in the news is one of the best ways we can develop our thinking.

When we show up, it's always a bad scene for folks.

Dana, one thing I want to- Exactly.

One thing I wanted to ask you about, so you had this co-authored piece posted in the last, I don't know, handful of months, Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI, Avoiding Decoys in Pursuit of Accountability with Janet Vertesi, Alex Taylor, and Benjamin Shestakovsky.

And yeah, I just wanted to, you know, we were talking to Adam earlier about AI.

We'll talk about that.

And then we'll talk to Dana Boyd, the Jerry Gay professor of communication at Cornell University, who recently published an interesting paper called something like Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI.

We'll keep this next segment short today, but one thing we'll do in most episodes is talk about what's happening in the news.

I tell my students that learning to apply our mental tools to what's happening in current technology topics in the news is one of the best ways we can develop our thinking.

you're old.

Exactly.

One thing I wanted to ask you about, so you had this co-authored piece posted in the last, I don't know, handful of months, Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI, Avoiding Decoys in Pursuit of Accountability with Janet Vertesi, Alex Taylor, and Benjamin Shestakovsky.

And yeah, I just wanted to, you know, we were talking to Adam earlier about AI.

And yeah, me talking now, we're seeing this in Europe in the form of riots, gang violence, threats to freedom of speech, and years of underinvestment in national defense.

And on that cheery note, that is it for Political Economy, post number 391.

Thanks as always for listening, and until next time, be free and do no harm.

Bye-bye.