We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 June 2009
Introduction
This chapter provides a transition from the micro-economic issues relating to valuation and pricing of individual commodities to the macro-economics of growth. We shall set off with a preliminary discussion of “simple” or stationary reproduction which Marx, following Hodgskin, envisaged as a circular-flow process (Section B), and then proceed to his analysis of capital accumulation and its determinants with particular reference to the “motives” governing savings decisions (Sections C and D). The remainder of the chapter seeks to provide an elementary account of both the celebrated “simple” and “extended reproduction” departmental schemes of Capital 2 (Sections E and F). We point in particular to the apparent inability of the departmental device to explain the transition from a stationary to a growing economy. (The device, we may point out here, is not used in discussion of the falling wage and profit rates during the course of growth, the subject matter of Chapters 3 and 4, but is applied in cyclical analysis as we shall see in Chapter 5.) An Appendix outlines Marx's objectives to Adam Smith's national-income accounting.
Setting the Stage: Stationary Reproduction as Circular-Flow Process
Capital 1 on “Simple Reproduction” (Chapter 23) explains the process whereby money is “converted into means of production and labour power”; these latter “converted” via the production process intocommodities “whose value exceeds that of their component parts, and, therefore, contains the capital originally advanced, plus a surplus value”; the value of those commodities then realized againstmoney in the market; and the process repeated “over and over again”(MECW 35: 564).
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
