This book demonstrates the continuing relevance of Marx’s critique of the capitalist system, in which value is simply equated with market price. It includes chapters specifically on the environment and financialisation, and presents Marx’s qualitative theory of value and the associated concept of fetishism in a clear and comprehensive manner. Section I demonstrates how fetishism developed in Marx’s writing from a journalistic metaphor to an analytical device central to his critique. In Section II, commodity fetishism is distinguished from other forms: of money, capital and interest-bearing capital. There follows an analysis of Marx’s complex attempt to distinguish his argument from that of Ricardo, and Samuel Bailey. The section ends with a discussion of the ontological status of value: as a social rather than a natural phenomenon. Section III considers the merits of understanding value by analogy with language, and critically assesses the merits of structural Marxism. Section IV challenges Marx’s emphasis solely on production, and considers also exchange and consumption as social relations. Section V critically assesses recent Marx-inspired literature relating to the two key crises of our time, finance and the environment, and identifies strong similarities between the key analytical questions that have been debated in each case.
Author(s): Desmond McNeill
Series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Thought
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 322
City: Cham
Foreword
Acknowledgements
About the Book
Praise for Fetishism and the Theory of Value
Contents
About the Author
1: Introduction
Bibliography
Part I: The Concept of Fetishism
2: The Origins of Fetishism in Marx’s Writings
Bibliography
3: The Development of the Concept over Time
Critique of Hegel’s Doctrine of the State (1843)
A Contribution to a Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction (1843–1844)
Excerpts from James Mill’s Elements of Political Economy (1844)
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Holy Family (1844)
Theses on Feuerbach (1845)
The German Ideology (1846)
Marx’s Letter to Annenkov (December 28, 1846)
The Poverty of Philosophy (1847)
Grundrisse (1858)
A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859)
Bibliography
4: Fetishism: A Preliminary Exegesis
1. Social
2. Relation
3. Social Relation Between Men
4. Relation Between Things
5. Assumes the Fantastic Form Of
Bibliography
Part II: The Ontology of Fetishism
5: Fetishism of Money, Capital, Interest-Bearing Capital and Commodities
The Fetishism of Money
The Fetishism of Capital
The Fetishism of Interest-Bearing Capital
Commodity Fetishism
Bibliography
6: The Form of Value: The Scylla of Bailey and the Charybdis of Hegel
Annex: A Comparison Between the First and Second German Editions of Capital
Modification 1
Modification 2
Modification 3
Introduction
Modification 5
Bibliography
7: Appearance and Reality: Some Ontological Issues
Bibliography
Part III: On Value and Meaning
8: What Is Value? Marx’s Use of Analogy
Bibliography
9: The Limitations of Structural Marxism
Introduction
Althusser
Lévi-Strauss: Communication and Exchange
Godelier: A Synthesis
Bibliography
10: The Commodity as Sign
Bibliography
Part IV: The Social Relations of Production, Exchange and Consumption
11: Marx’s Emphasis on Production
Bibliography
12: Exchange and Reciprocity
Bibliography
13: Consumption, Need and Use-Value
Bibliography
Part V: Marx in the Twenty-First Century
14: Marx and the Environment
Introduction
Marx and Nature
Theories of Value
Accumulation by Dispossession
Nature as Accumulation Strategy
Marx on Rent
Brief Conclusion
Bibliography
15: Marx and Financialisation
Introduction
Marx’s Analysis of Interest-Bearing Capital
Financialisation of Everyday Life
Is Finance Productive?
What Kind of Appropriation?
Bibliography
16: Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
