Free to Lose: An Introduction to Marxist Economic Philosophy

by John E. Roemer

Overview

Attacking the usefulness of such central Marxian concepts as the labor theory of value and surplus value, John Roemer reconstructs Marxian economic philosophy from the concepts of exploitation and class, showing that exploitation can be derived from a system of property relations. He then looks at the causes of the unequal distribution of wealth, including robbery and plunder, willingness to take risks, differential rates of time preference, luck, and entrepreneurship. He further examines the evolution of property systems—slave, feudal, capitalist, socialist—from the perspective of the theory of historical materialism, and ends by analyzing the properties of a social system in which ownership of productive assets in the external world is public, while ownership of internal productive assets—skills and talents—is private.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674042865
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	215
File size:	778 KB

About the Author

John Roemer is Elizabeth S. and A. Varick Stout Professor of Political Science and Economics, Yale University.

Table of Contents

Contents
1. Introduction
The Private Property System
Exploitation
Classes
Historical Materialism
Capitalism and Freedom
Method
A Preview
2. The Origin of Exploitation
An Egalitarian Distribution of Capital
The Technical Definition of Exploitation
Unequal Ownership of the Capital Stock
The Causes of Exploitation
The Industrial Reserve Army
Concluding Comments
3. Feudalism and Capitalism
A Brief Account of Feudalism
A Difference between Capitalism and Feudalism
4. Exploitation and Profits
Embodied Labor and Exploitation
Prices and the Profit Rate
The Relationship between Exploitation and Profits
An Economy with Many Produced Goods
The Social Division of Labor and the Perception of Exploitation
The Labor Theory of Value
5. The Morality of Exploitation
Exploitation as the Source of Profits
The Initial Distribution
Justification of Unequal Distribution
6. The Emergence of Class
A Definition of Equilibrium for a Corn Model with Assets
Class Formation
Class and Wealth
Class and Exploitation
The Significance of Class
Exploitation Deemphasized
7. Exploitation without a Labor Market
The Corn Economy with a Capital Market
Capital Market Island: The Five-Class Model
Capital Markets and Workers' Cooperatives
Exploitation without Labor or Capital Markets
International Capitalism: Imperialism and Labor Migration
Domination versus Exploitation versus Property Relations
8. Historical Materialism
Economic Structure, Productive Forces, and Superstructure
The Role of Class Struggle
The Logic of the Theory
Challenges from Economic History
Evolving Property Relations
9. Evolving Forms of Exploitation
Historical Materialism and Private Property
The Failure of Surplus Value as a Measure of Exploitation
A Property-Relations Approach to Capitalist Exploitation
Feudal Exploitation
A Comparison of Revolutionary Transitions
Socialist Exploitation
Socially Necessary Exploitation
Syndicalization versus Socialization
10. Public Ownership of the Means of Production
The Case for Public Ownership
Three Political Philosophies
The Story of Able and Infirm
Characterization of an Economic Constitution
Evaluation
11. Epilogue
Appendix: Statements and Proofs of Theorems
Bibliographical Notes
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

During the past decade, John Roemer has established himself as one of the foremost interpreters of Marxian economic analysis, and his writing has been much read and discussed not only by economists, but also by philosophers, political scientists, and historians. In the present work, Roemer attempts to systematize his ‘reconstruction’ of Marx’s ideas on exploitation and class.

Journal of Economic Literature - Louis Putterman

Free to Lose uses neoclassical economic models to assess both Marx’s concept of exploitation and his endorsement of socialism. From within this framework, Roemer makes a valuable, often brilliant, contribution to Marxist economic theory.

Economics and Philosophy - Debra Satz

John Roemer’s reconstruction of the concept of exploitation and his elaboration of its relationship to class constitute the most important theoretical innovations on these problems in contemporary Marxism. Free to Lose presents these ideas in a clear, nontechnical, and engaging manner which will make them accessible not only to undergraduate economics students, but to sociologists, political scientists, and historians as well.

Erik Olin Wright