Political economy

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches political economy through Marx, whom he presents as the synthesis of English economics, French politics and German theory. He takes up Aristotle's distinction between use value and exchange value, which he links in Rousseau to enjoyment and wealth1. He sets out the theory of value: the value of a commodity depends on the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. He distinguishes wealth, whose source is nature, from value, which comes from labour, and places the secret of surplus value in the unpaid portion of labour power. For him, unemployment is not an effect of technical progress: he ties it to the internal contradiction of capital2. He maintains that Marxism is not an economism. The same productive forces do not produce the same world under different property relations, as the privatisation of dams shows3. With Antoine Vatan, he notes that Smith, Ricardo, Say and Walras invoke a natural order. He compares the invisible hand of the market to the idea of a balance of nature: for him, both notions belong to the same ideology, which he likens to the robinsonades criticised by Marx4.

1. 1What is to be done? 1/329 Jan 2016
2. 2Marx on the Beach 2/21 Feb 2016
3. 3#5.3 bis Questions (Facebook Live)13 Jan 2019
4. 4A balance in nature?31 Mar 2021

Introduction produced automatically from the 4 sessions on this theme, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the sessions.