The Political Economy of Capitalism
Literature recommended for the course:
1.. F. Mikhalevsky, “Political Economy,” 1928.
2. M. Ilyin, M. Rabinovich, “The Political Economy of Capitalism in Questions and Answers”, 1973.
3. K.V. Ostrovitianov et al. “Political Economy,” 1954.
(The best and most complete presentation to date of the political economy of capitalism and socialism)
4. K. Marx, “Capital” vol.1,2,3.
COURSE CONTENT
I. The general foundations of the capitalist mode of production.
What political economy studies.
Social production.
Economic laws.
Commodity production.
What are the properties of the commodity.
How the value of a commodity is determined.
The dual nature of labour.
How value is determined.
What money is and how it originated.
What goods acted as money.
The functions of money in the commodity economy.
The law of value.
Simple commodity circulation under capitalism.
Can the exchange of commodities serve as a source of income for capitalists?
What is labor power.
How surplus value is created.
What is capital.
The components of capital and their role in the exploitation of wage labor.
The rate and mass of surplus value.
In what ways do capitalists increase the exploitation of workers?
The wage of a hired worker.
What determines the level of workers’ wages.
Simple reproduction.
The accumulation of capital.
The universal law of capitalist accumulation.
The deterioration of the proletariat under capitalism.
How surplus value is converted into profit.
The rate of profit.
Average profit.
Law of the tendency of the average rate of profit to fall.
The price of production.
How the capitalist trader makes his profit.
Loan capital.
Characteristics of loan capital.
The source and amount of lending interest.
The role of credit.
The functions of banks.
Currency crises.
Land rents.
Fixed added value in agriculture.
Differential rent.
Does the landowner get rent for worse land?
Why land has a price.
Reproduction of social capital.
The aggregate social product.
How national income is distributed.
Why economic crises occur.
II. Imperialism (monopolistic stage of capitalism)
How pre-monopolistic capitalism developed into imperialism.
Imperialism and the basic foundations of capitalism.
