Critique of Marx's Capital by Robert Wolff
video the thought of Marx lecture01 Jan 15, 2011 lecture02 Jan 16, 2011 lecture03 Jan 17, 2011 lecture04 Jan 19, 2011 lecture05 Jan 24, 2011 lecture06 2011 lecture07 2011 the thought of Karl Marx part 10, Jan 28, 2011 blog Karl Marx (1818-1883): the theorist of capitalism, the historian of economic theory, a great economic theorist. dialectical materialism was Engel’s idea. Analytical Marxists: Gerald Cohen, KARL MARX’S THEORY OF HISTORY, Jan Elster, MAKING SENSE OF MARX Robert Wolff: Marx considers the philosophy of a society to be a part of its ideological superstructure, along with its religion, law, and art, among other things. Moral judgments are a part of the philosophy and law of a society, hence ideological and superstructural as well. The fundamental principle of bourgeois justice is that equals be given for equals in a free and open marketplace where men [it is always men] meet one another as legal equals, none compelled by law or custom to enter into bargains with another. The ideal capitalist, Marx argues, pays a fair price for the labor he employs. He pays a price equivalent to the reproduction cost of that labor, which, as he and Ricardo would say, is equal to the labor value embodied in that labor. Now, to be sure, capitalists do not play fair. As Marx tells us in the great chapter on The Working Day, capitalists try such underhanded tricks, in their effort to extract more value from their workers, as fiddling with the clocks in the factory so as to make the workers labor for a bit longer than the contracted for ten or twelve hours. But this is not exploitation. This is just cheating. ...