Prices of productionPrices of production (or "production prices"; in German Produktionspreise) is a concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy, defined as "cost-price + average profit". A production price can be thought of as a type of supply price for products; it refers to the price levels at which newly produced goods and services would have to be sold by the producers, in order to reach a normal, average profit rate on the capital invested to produce the products (not the same as the profit on the turnover).
Abstract labour and concrete labourAbstract labour and concrete labour refer to a distinction made by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It refers to the difference between human labour in general as economically valuable worktime versus human labour as a particular activity that has a specific useful effect within the (capitalist) mode of production. As economically valuable worktime, human labour is spent to add value to products or assets (thereby conserving their capital value, and/or transferring value from inputs to outputs).
Marxian economicsMarxian economics, or the Marxian school of economics, is a heterodox school of political economic thought. Its foundations can be traced back to Karl Marx's critique of political economy. However, unlike critics of political economy, Marxian economists tend to accept the concept of the economy prima facie. Marxian economics comprises several different theories and includes multiple schools of thought, which are sometimes opposed to each other; in many cases Marxian analysis is used to complement, or to supplement, other economic approaches.
Exchange valueIn political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value (German: Tauschwert) refers to one of the four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market, the other three attributes being use value, economic value, and price. Thus, a commodity has the following: a value, represented by the socially necessary labour time to produce it (Note: the first link is to a non-Marxian definition of value); a use value (or utility); an exchange value, which is the proportion at which a commodity can be exchanged for other entities; a price (an actual selling price, or an imputed ideal price).
Commodity fetishismIn Marxist philosophy, the term commodity fetishism describes the economic relationships of production and exchange as being social relationships that exist among things (money and merchandise) and not as relationships that exist among people. As a form of reification, commodity fetishism presents economic value as inherent to the commodities, and not as arising from the workforce, from the human relations that produced the commodity, the goods and the services.
Unequal exchangeUnequal exchange is used primarily in Marxist economics, but also in ecological economics (more specifically also as ecologically unequal exchange), to denote forms of exploitation hidden in or underwriting trade. Unequal exchange is usually calculated by assuming that any trade between a country with a high price level and a country with a low price level, is exploitation.
Value (economics)In economics, economic value is a measure of the benefit provided by a good or service to an economic agent. It is generally measured through units of currency, and the interpretation is therefore "what is the maximum amount of money a person is willing and able to pay for a good or service?” Among the competing schools of economic theory there are differing theories of value. Economic value is not the same as market price, nor is economic value the same thing as market value.
Surplus valueIn Marxian economics, surplus value is the difference between the amount raised through a sale of a product and the amount it cost to manufacture it: i.e. the amount raised through sale of the product minus the cost of the materials, plant and labour power. The concept originated in Ricardian socialism, with the term "surplus value" itself being coined by William Thompson in 1824; however, it was not consistently distinguished from the related concepts of surplus labor and surplus product.
CommodificationWithin a capitalist economic system, commodification is the transformation of things such as goods, services, ideas, nature, personal information, people or animals into objects of trade or commodities. A commodity at its most basic, according to Arjun Appadurai, is "anything intended for exchange," or any object of economic value. Commodification is often criticized on the grounds that some things ought not to be treated as commodities—for example, water, education, data, information, knowledge, human life, and animal life.
Law of valueThe law of the value of commodities (German: Wertgesetz der Waren), known simply as the law of value, is a central concept in Karl Marx's critique of political economy first expounded in his polemic The Poverty of Philosophy (1847) against Pierre-Joseph Proudhon with reference to David Ricardo's economics. Most generally, it refers to a regulative principle of the economic exchange of the products of human work, namely that the relative exchange-values of those products in trade, usually expressed by money-prices, are proportional to the average amounts of human labor-time which are currently socially necessary to produce them within the capitalist mode of production.
Surplus labourSurplus labour (German: Mehrarbeit) is a concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It means labour performed in excess of the labour necessary to produce the means of livelihood of the worker ("necessary labour"). The "surplus" in this context means the additional labour a worker has to do in their job, beyond earning their keep. According to Marxian economics, surplus labour is usually uncompensated (unpaid) labour.
Labor theory of valueThe labor theory of value (LTV) is a theory of value that argues that the economic value of a good or service is determined by the total amount of "socially necessary labor" required to produce it. The LTV is usually associated with Marxian economics, although it originally appeared in the theories of earlier classical economists such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, and later in anarchist economics. Smith saw the price of a commodity in terms of the labor that the purchaser must expend to buy it, which embodies the concept of how much labor a commodity, a tool for example, can save the purchaser.
Relations of productionRelations of production (Produktionsverhältnisse) is a concept frequently used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in their theory of historical materialism and in Das Kapital. It is first explicitly used in Marx's published book The Poverty of Philosophy, although Marx and Engels had already defined the term in The German Ideology. Some social relations are voluntary or freely chosen (a person chooses to associate with another person or a group). But other social relations are involuntary, i.e.
Surplus productSurplus product (Mehrprodukt) is a concept theorised by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. Roughly speaking, it is the extra goods produced above the amount needed for a community of workers to survive at its current standard of living. Marx first began to work out his idea of surplus product in his 1844 notes on James Mill's Elements of political economy. Notions of "surplus produce" have been used in economic thought and commerce for a long time (notably by the Physiocrats), but in Das Kapital, Theories of Surplus Value and the Grundrisse Marx gave the concept a central place in his interpretation of economic history.
Primitive accumulation of capitalIn Marxian economics and preceding theories, the problem of primitive accumulation (also called previous accumulation, prior accumulation, or original accumulation) of capital concerns the origin of capital and therefore how class distinctions between possessors and non-possessors came to be. Adam Smith's account of primitive-original accumulation depicted a peaceful process in which some workers laboured more diligently than others and gradually built up wealth, eventually leaving the less diligent workers to accept living wages for their labour.
Das KapitalCapital: A Critique of Political Economy (Das Kapital. Kritik der politischen Ökonomie), also known as Capital, is a foundational theoretical text in materialist philosophy and critique of political economy written by Karl Marx, published as three volumes in 1867, 1885, and 1894. The culmination of his life's work, the text contains Marx's analysis of capitalism, to which he sought to apply his theory of historical materialism "to lay bare the economic laws of modern society", following from classical political economists such as Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill.
Production (economics)Production is the process of combining various inputs, both material (such as metal, wood, glass, or plastics) and immaterial (such as plans, or knowledge) in order to create output. Ideally this output will be a good or service which has value and contributes to the utility of individuals. The area of economics that focuses on production is called production theory, and it is closely related to the consumption (or consumer) theory of economics. The production process and output directly result from productively utilising the original inputs (or factors of production).
