Capitalism vs economic democracy

Capitalism

vs.

Economic Democracy:

Illuminating capitalist vs. socialist development with a theory inferred from the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Dunayevskaya, and Sraffa.

Matthew K. Owen

Copyright © 2011 Matthew K. Owen

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1461179386
ISBN-13: 978-1461179382

CONTENTS

| |Preface.|iv |
| |Introduction. |1 |
|1 |Illuminating the development of productive forces with the Standard Product. |2 |
| | | |
|2 |Illuminating capitalist growth, recession, andrecovery with the Standard Product. |11 |
| | | |
|3 |Inferring a theory of development of state capitalism vs. development of socialism into |16 |
| |communism from the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Dunayevskaya. | |
| |Bibliography|47 |

Preface.

The beginnings of the present work were in an effort of self-clarification of Piero Sraffa’s Production of Commodities by means of Commodities that I undertook in 1986 and 1987. Research in pursuit of this drew my attention to a special value-theory issue of Review of Radical Political Economics for which Iprepared an article, ‘Slash goes Occam’s Razor.’ Further research into the literature indicated to me the need for clarification and reformulation, to which the present work is addressed.

This book is a result of a long inquiry into issues of growth and development. Professors Ronald Chilcote, Melvin Gurtov, Victor Lippit and Howard Sherman of the University of California at Riverside, aswell as Professors Mayo Toruno and Ted Schmidt of California State University at San Bernardino, have all contributed to my understanding of these questions and problems. At least as much can be said of the many economists upon whose works I draw: first and foremost, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, V. I. Lenin, Raya Dunayevskaya and Piero Sraffa, from whose works many others draw. The workRereading Capital by Ben Fine and Laurence Harris (New York:, 1979: Columbia University Press) inspired me to re-examine the relation of Sraffa’s Production of Commodities By Means of Commodities (Oxford, 1960: Oxford University Press) to Capital: this is why I sought to compare Marx’s abstractions to Sraffa’s, and to re-examine the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, in which a similar method ofabstraction is used to illuminate the development of economic democracy from socialism to communism (the online resource Marxist Internet Archive, http://www.marxists.org/ was enormously helpful here). If I have made any contribution to economic thought, it has been made possible by the contributions of these economists; conversely, any errors, omissions, and/or misunderstandings in the present work areentirely my own.

In an entirely different sense, many others, most especially my parents, Herbert W. Owen and Rosalee Margaret Owen, have made this work possible. My sister, Linda Heuston, transcribed the work from hardcopy to electronic media, which enabled me to do what needed doing in order to complete the work. Bob Masci led me to the Createspace samizdat, https://www.createspace.com/,where this book is being published. UC Riverside and CSU San Bernardino have provided resources contributing to this book, as well. I hope that, inter alia, this work can be seen as a labour of gratitude, as well as an investigative effort on their behalf as well as on behalf of all who may benefit from it.

Introduction.

Ever since the publication of Production of Commodities by Means of...