- •Lecture 1. The subject and the method of Political Economy
- •The economic activity as a condition of existence and society development. The labour-process and its elementary factors.
- •Instruments of labour.
- •The productive forces and productive relations: their unity and interdependency.
- •Economic laws and their objective character.
- •The subject and functions of Political Economy.
- •The method of Political Economy.
- •Lecture 2. Commodity production
- •Commodity and its factors: use-value and value. Exchange value.
- •The magnitude of commodity value.
- •Commodity and its factors: use-value and value. Exchange value.
- •The magnitude of commodity value.
- •Lecture 3. Commodity and Money
- •The form of value and its historical development.
- •The appearance of money. The essence and functions of money
- •The Fetishism of Commodities.
- •The form of value and its historical development.
- •Elementary or Accidental Form of Value.
- •X commodity a is worth y commodity b.
- •20 Yards of linen are worth 1 coat.
- •Total or Expanded Form of Value.
- •The General Form of Value
- •1. The altered character of the form of value
- •The Money-Form
- •The appearance of money. The essence and functions of money
- •The measure of Values
- •The medium of Circulation
- •Commodity — Money — Commodity.
- •The mean of hoarding
- •The means of Payment
- •Universal Money
- •The Fetishism of Commodities.
- •Lecture 4. Labour-Process and process of producing surplus-value.
- •Transformation of money into capital.
- •Labour-power as a commodity.
- •Labour-Process and process of producing surplus-value.
- •The Transformation of money into capital.
- •The labour-power as a commodity.
- •The Labour-Process and the Process of Producing Surplus-Value.
- •Lecture 5. Capital and Labour-Power
- •The essence of the capital. Constant Capital and Variable Capital
- •The Rate and the Mass of Surplus-Value
- •Modes of surplus-value production
- •Working-day I. Working-day II. Working-day III.
- •The relative surplus-value.
- •The absolute surplus-value.
- •In what follows the chief combinations alone are considered.
- •The stages of labour division in condition of capitalism
- •Simple capitalist co-operation
- •Division of Labour and Manufacture
- •Machinery and Modern Industry
- •Lecture 6. Wages
- •The essence of wages
- •The main forms and systems of wages
- •National Differences of Wages
- •The essence of wages
- •The main forms and systems of wages
- •2.1. Time-Wages
- •Daily value of labour-power/working-day of a given number of hours’
- •Piece-Wages as transformed condition of Time-Wages
- •Daily value of labour-power/the working day of a given number of hours
- •National Differences of Wages
- •Lecture 7. The accumulation of capital
- •The substance and types of reproduction. Simple Reproduction.
- •Capitalist production on a progressively increasing scale.
- •The substance and factors which determine the magnitude of accumulation.
- •Technical, value and organic composition of capital and tendencies of their dynamics.
- •Forms of accumulation. Centralization and concentration of capital.
- •The accumulation of capital and the employment. Unemployment and its forms.
- •Lecture 8. The circuit of capital
- •The circuit of capital and its stages.
- •The Circuit of Money Capital
- •I. First Stage. M — c
- •II. Second Stage. Function of Productive Capital
- •III. Third Stage. C' — m'
- •IV. The Circuit as a Whole
- •The Circuit of Productive Capital
- •The Circuit of Commodity-Capital
- •Three Formulas of the Circuit
- •The Time of Circulation
- •The Costs of Circulation
- •The Time of Purchase and Sale
- •Costs of Storage
- •Costs of Transportation
- •Lecture 9. Turnover of capital
- •The Turnover Time and the Number of Turnovers
- •Fixed Capital and Circulating Capital
- •The Aggregate Turnover of Advanced Capital. Cycles of Turnover
- •The Turnover of Variable Capital. The Annual Rate and mass of Surplus-Value.
- •(Capital turned over annually) / (capital advanced)
- •(Quantity of surplus-value produced during the year) / (variable capital advanced)
- •(Real rate of surplus-value × variable capital advanced × n) / (variable capital advanced)
- •(Quantity of s produced in one turnover period) / (variable capital employed in one turnover period)
- •Lecture 10. The Reproduction and Circulation of the Aggregate Social Capital
- •2. The Two Departments of Social Production
- •In each department the capital consists of two parts:
- •The exchange of the Aggregate Social Commodity in the case of simple reproduction.
- •I. Production of Means of Production:
- •II. Production of Articles of Consumption:
- •The exchange of the Aggregate Social Commodity in the case of Reproduction on an Expanded Scale.
- •Schematic Presentation of Accumulation
- •Lecture 11. Cost-Price and Profit
- •Cost-Price and profit
- •The Rate of Profit
- •Factors which determine the rate of profit.
- •Formation of a General Rate of Profit and Transformation of the Values of Commodities into Prices of Production
- •The Law of the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall
- •Counteracting Influences
- •Lecture 12. Commercial Capital and Commercial Profit
- •Commercial Capital as the isolated part of industrial capital.
- •Commercial profit and mechanism of its formation.
- •Commercial Capital as the isolated part of industrial capital.
- •Commercial profit and mechanism of its formation.
- •Lecture 13. Money Capital and the interest
- •Interest-Bearing Capital
- •The interest.
- •Division of Profit. Rate of Interest. Natural Rate of Interest.
- •The Credit
- •The Role of Credit in Capitalist Production
- •II. Reduction of the costs of circulation.
- •III. Formation of stock companies. Thereby:
- •Lecture 14. Agrarian relations in the case of capitalist economics
- •Economic relations in agriculture.
- •The essence of capitalist ground-rent. Ground-rent and rent.
- •Monopoly in land ownership. The origin of Differential Rent. Differential Rent I
- •1) Fertility.
- •2) The location of the land.
- •Differential Rent II
- •Absolute Ground-Rent and monopolistic Ground-Rent – their unity and differences.
- •Price of Land
- •I. The price of land may rise without the rent rising, namely:
- •II. The price of land may rise, because the rent increases.
- •Lecture 15. National income
- •The essence of national income. The Trinity Formula
- •Production of Gross domestic product and National income.
- •Distribution Relations and Production Relations
- •The essence of national income. The Trinity Formula
- •2. Production of Gross domestic product and National income.
- •Distribution Relations and Production Relations
I. The price of land may rise without the rent rising, namely:
1) by a mere fall in interest rate, which causes the rent to be sold more dearly, and thereby the capitalized rent, or price of land, rises;
2) because the interest on capital incorporated in the land rises.
II. The price of land may rise, because the rent increases.
The rent may increase, because the price of the product of the land rises, in which case the rate of differential rent always rises, whether the rent on the worst cultivated soil be large, small or non-existent. By rate we mean the ratio of that portion of surplus-value converted into rent to the invested capital which produces the agricultural product. This differs from the ratio of surplus-product to total product, for the total product does not comprise the entire invested capital, namely, the fixed capital, which continues to exist alongside the product. On the other hand, it covers the fact that on soils yielding differential rent an increasing portion of the product is transformed into an excess of surplus-product. The increase in price of agricultural product of the worst soil first creates rent and thereby the price of land.
The rent, however, may also increase without a rise in price of the agricultural product. This price may remain constant, or even decrease.
If the price remains constant, the rent can grow only (apart from monopoly prices) because, on the one hand, given the same amount of capital invested in the old lands, new lands of better quality are cultivated, which merely suffice, however, to cover the increased demand, so that the regulating market-price remains unchanged. In this case, the price of the old lands does not rise, but the price of the newly cultivated lands rises above that of the old ones.
Or, on the other hand, the rent rises because the mass of capital exploiting the land increases, assuming that the relative productivity and market-price remain the same. Although the rent thus remains the same compared with the invested capital, still its mass, for instance, may be doubled, because the capital itself has doubled. Since no fall in price has occurred, the second investment of capital yields a surplus-profit just as well as the first, and it likewise is transformed into rent after the expiration of the lease. The mass of rent rises here, because the mass of capital producing a rent increases.
Lecture 15. National income
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The essence of national income. The Trinity Formula
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Production of Gross domestic product and National income.
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Distribution Relations and Production Relations
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The essence of national income. The Trinity Formula
Capital — profit (profit of enterprise plus interest), land — ground-rent, labour — wages, this is the trinity formula which comprises all the secrets of the social production process.
Furthermore, since as previously demonstrated interest appears as the specific characteristic product of capital and profit of enterprise on the contrary appears as wages independent of capital, the above trinity formula reduces itself more specifically to the following:
Capital — interest, land — ground-rent, labour — wages, where profit, the specific characteristic form of surplus-value belonging to the capitalist mode of production, is fortunately eliminated.
On closer examination of this economic trinity, we find the following:
First, the alleged sources of the annually available wealth belong to widely dissimilar spheres and are not at all analogous with one another.
Capital, land, labour. However, capital is not a thing, but rather a definite social production relation, belonging to a definite historical formation of society, which is manifested in a thing and lends this thing a specific social character. Capital is not the sum of the material and produced means of production. Capital is rather the means of production transformed into capital, which in themselves are no more capital than gold or silver in itself is money. It is the means of production monopolized by a certain section of society, confronting living labour-power as products and working conditions rendered independent of this very labour-power, which are personified through this antithesis in capital.
Secondly, the land, inorganic nature as such, rudis indigestaque moles, in all its primeval wildness. Value is labour. Therefore surplus-value cannot be earth. Absolute fertility of the soil effects nothing more than the following: a certain quantity of labour produces a certain product — in accordance with the natural fertility of the soil. The difference in soil fertility causes the same quantities of labour and capital, hence the same value, to be manifested in different quantities of agricultural products; that is, causes these products to have different individual values.
And third party in this union, a mere ghost — "the" Labour, which is no more than an abstraction and taken by itself does not exist at all, or, if we take the productive activity of human beings in general, by which they promote the interchange with Nature, divested not only of every social form and well-defined character, but even in its bare natural existence, independent of society, removed from all societies, and as an expression and confirmation of life which the still non-social man in general has in common with the one who is in any way social.
Capital — interest; landed property, private ownership of the Earth, and, to be sure, modern and corresponding to the capitalist mode of production — rent; wage-labour — wages. The connection between the sources of national income is supposed to be represented in this form. Wage-labour and landed property, like capital, are historically determined social forms; one of labour, the other of monopolized terrestrial globe, and indeed both forms corresponding to capital and belonging to the same economic formation of society.