Contending Economic Theories: Neoclassical, Keynesian, and Marxian (MIT Press) by Richard D. Wolff & Stephen A. Resnick

Author:Richard D. Wolff & Stephen A. Resnick [Wolff, Richard D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2012-09-06T14:00:00+00:00

merchant capitalists, and so on. Of course, the monopoly revenue will only

accrue so long as buyers demand the game and lack alternative sources for

buying it.

From the standpoint of Marxian class analysis, we look more closely at

who pays the monopoly fee for access to the market for that computer game.

Suppose that one buyer is an industrial capitalist who purchases the game to

make it part of the services provided to patrons of the hotel operated by that

industrial capitalist. The game is then an input ( C in the usual C + V + S =

W equation for capitalist commodity production) into the industrial capitalist ’ s

production and sale of hotel services. The industrial capitalist pays for the

game not only its value but in addition the monopoly fee. That fee is paid out

of the hotel capitalist ’ s appropriated surplus. It is a subsumed class payment

because access to the market for that game is a condition of that hotel ’ s con-

tinued ability to appropriate surplus value from its productive employees. In

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this case, because the nonclass process of controlling access occurs together

with the capitalist subsumed class process, the monopolists exercising that

control constitute a capitalist subsumed class. Likewise, when those monopo-

lists sell games to buyers who are not industrial capitalists, their monopoly

revenues are not subsumed class payments, and such monopolists do not then

constitute a capitalist subsumed class.

In all of the examples above, the subsumed class process differs from non-

class processes such as moneylending, managing, merchanting, landowning,

teaching, owning, and monopolizing. Only the processes of surplus labor

appropriation and distribution refer to class, while “ nonclass, ” by defi nition,

encompasses all of the other processes of social life. Marxian theory inquires

whether, when, and how these nonclass processes provide conditions of exis-

tence for the capitalist fundamental class process, for exploitation. It inquires

further whether industrial capitalists distribute portions of the surplus value

they appropriate to secure these nonclass processes. One key goal of Marxian

analysis is to examine and assess how well a capitalist class structure is secur-

ing its various conditions of existence (how suffi cient is its appropriated

surplus, how effectively distributed, etc.). Another is to identify which of its

conditions of existence may be in jeopardy and how that may affect the repro-

duction of the class structure.

4.8

Class Positions and Individuals ’ Incomes

In Marxian theory, with its concern to show how class processes matter in

modern societies, considerable attention is directed to individuals ’ incomes.

Neoclassical theory is mostly interested in the connection between individual

income and the marginal productivity of the resources (labor and/or capital)

that each individual contributes to production and the decisions of that indi-

vidual to supply labor and/or capital. Keynesian theory is mostly interested in

how individuals divide their incomes between consumption and saving and the

impacts of that division on employment and income. By contrast, the aim of

Marxian theory is to show the role of class in overdetermining the distribution

of incomes among individuals in any society, to explore the interrelation

between class processes and income distributions.

4.8.1 Class Processes and the Distribution of Income

In terms of Marxian class analysis, an individual in a capitalist society can

obtain income in three ways.

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