Table Of Content....... .
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CAPITAL AND.
EXPLOITATIOq
BY JOHN WEEKS
EDWARD ARNOLD
Copyright © Princeton University Press 19H I
First published in the United States of America
in 1981 by Princeton University Press
First published in the United Kingdom in 1981
by Edward Arnold (Publishers) Limited.
~I Bedford Square. London WCIB 3DQ
BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Weeks. John
Capital and Exploitation
I. Capitalism 2. Marxian economics
I. Title
330.12'2 HB501
ISBN 0-7131-6350-X
ISBN 0-7131-6351-8 PBK
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
fOR L1Z
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX
INTRODUCTION
I. Value as Embodied Labor 11
II. Value as a Social Relation 27
APPENDIX: THE VIEWS OF MARX AND ENGELS ON
THE LAW OF VALUE 50
Ill. Exploitation and the Rate of Surplus Value
APPENDIX: STALIN'S' VIEWS ON THE LAW
OF VALUE 88
IV. Theory of Money 95
V. Credit, Credit Crises, and Social Capital 123
VI. The Competition among Cap!tals 149
VII. Fixed Capital and Circulation 173
Vlll. Accumulation and Crises 187
INDEX 219
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Through the last decade and one-half, there has emerged a
growing interest in Marxian theory. Why this should be the
case is itself an interesting question in the process by which
the material conditions oflife in the industrial capitalist coun
tries produce modes of thought and analysis of those condi
tions. Particularly in the United States, the influence of Marx
on intellectuals and activists was slight until fifteen years ago.
Indeed, the science of historical materialism ("Marxism")
stayed alive as a subject in the United States primarily
through the efforts of a few people: those associated with the
journals Monthly Review and Sciellce and Society, and individ
uals such as Paul Mattick and James Becker.
The student and black movements of the 1960s and early
1970s were largely atheoretical except on their fringes. I was
involved in the antiwar movement and, in retrospect. cannot
but be astonished how antitheoretical and even anti-Marxian
that movement was. At one of the founding meetings of the
Union of Radical Political Economists, in New York in
1968, Paul Sweezy addressed a group of young. radical econ
omists and stated that to provide a radical critique of capi
talism, one had to be a Marxist. It is doubtful that onc in ten
in the group agreed. Certainly I did not. It was only much
later that I recognized the truth of Sweezy's statement and
the debt which the present generation of American Marxists
owe to him and others who held fast to that view through
the repressive 1950s and anti theoretical, "radical" 19 6()s.
My own interest in Marxism began while teaching at
Birkbeck College, University of London, in 1973-1975.
Largely by happenstance, a group of economists collected
there who subsequently have become well known to those
familiar with the new Marxian literature: Ben Fine, Laurence
Harris, and Susan HimI11elweit. To these three I owe an in
tellectual debt, for their discussions of Marx excited me.
CAPITAL AND
EXPLOITATION
INTRODUCTION
In the Commlwist Mallifesto, Marx and Engels state their fa
mous dictum that, whereas previously analysts sought to ex
plain the world, the purpose of their analysis is to change the
world. And to change it in a particular way, i.e., to over
throw the rule of capital and establish a socialist society, itself
merely a transitional phase to a communist society. Al
though Marx's ideas changed considerably between the pub
lication of the Mall(j"esto and the writing of his mature works,
the central revolutionary purpose of his theoretical investi
gations remained unchanged.
In what follows, the theoretical core of Marx's critique of
capitalism is presented to demonstrate that this critique, now
over 100 years old, is also a critique of contemporary capi
talism. The presentation is not an exercise in the history of
thought, but rather an attempt to analyze the nature of con
temporary capitalist society. My purpose is not to explain
Marx's thought per se, but to explain capitalism. However,
the basis of the explanation that follows can be found in the
work of Marx, particularly the three volumes of Capital. In
sofar as anyone except a student of the development of ideas
should be interested in Marx's work, it is because that work
explains the social world around him. And if this book
makes Marx's writings more understandable, but provides
no insight to capitalist society in the latter part of the twen
tieth century, it has failed in its purpose.
Anyone sampling the writings of those who identify
themselves as Marxists quickly discovers that the term
"Marxist" or "Marxian analysis" encompasses a wide vari
ety of views, some of which arc clearly in opposition. To
some, these contradictory and frequently antagonistic inter
pretations indicate basic confusion within the structure of
Marx's argument. While certainly there arc points of internal
4 INTRODUCTION
cont'usil)Il, the cumpl'tiIlg and cunHining incerprl'tatiuns (and
outright rl:jectiuns) ut' Marx's theury largely rl'Hect the dif
tl-rl'lIC politic,l! perspectives uf those calling thelllselves
.. Marxists." Allllust tWill the 1Il0l1lellC Clpir,li was pub
Iishl'd. Marxists divided illCo two call1ps: those who, like
Marx. concluded that rapitalislIl could not be reformed to
'Ill\, basic degree and required violene overthrow by the
wurking cbss and its political party; and those who thought
that Marx's analysis could provide the basis for the reform
and rationalization of capitalism, and a peaceful, even parlia
lllentary transition to socialism. In the first decades of this
ceneury, these two camps were personified in V. I. Lenin,
leader of the Russian Revolution, and Karl Kautsky, head of
the German Social Democratic Party and former personal
secretary to Friedrich Engcls. The great debate between
Lenin the revolutionary and Kautsky the reformer continues
to rage among Marxist intellectuals and within the commu
nist movemenc in each country of the world,
It is essential to realize at the outset that Man's theory is
not a critique of the 'llmscs of capitalism. While Capiral (par
ticularly Volume I) is filled with contemporary examples of
the horrors of the Industrial Revolution and capitalist abuses
of the masses of the British population, Marx clearly consid
ered capitalism to be progressive compared to previous social
systems.' Marx's critique demonstrated that capitalism was
(and is) but onc historically specific mode of social reproduc
tion, and one with its own inherent limits. The purpose of
his theorizing (and the purpose of this book) was not to ex
pose the abuses of capitalism, which were and are obvious to
any observer, but to reveal the contradictory nature of capi
talism, which necessarily sets limits to its development.
The key to unlocking the inner nature of capitalism is the
labor theory of value. This theory, sometimes referred to as
"the law of value," is not an aspect of the analysis of capi
talism, but the theoretical core from which all uther analysis
unfolds. This view, that value theory is the theory of capi-
, The progressiveness of capitalism IS discussed in Chapters 11 Jnd Ill.
