Capitalism simple commodity production and merchant capital: the political economy of 19th century Greece

1986 ◽  
Author(s):  
Α. Δεδουσόπουλος
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
Merchant Capital

The Political Economy of Population Counts in Ottoman Palestine: Nablus, circa 1850

1994 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beshara B. Doumani
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
Advisory Council ◽  
The Political ◽  
Demographic Development ◽  
Population Count ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Population Counts ◽  
New Evidence

New evidence, culled from the Nablus advisory council (majlis al-shūrā) records and based on an actual Ottoman population count taken in December 1849, indicates that the city's population at that time numbered at least 20,000 people, more than twice the frequently cited figure of 8,000–9,000. This revision raises serious doubts about the veracity of hitherto commonly accepted population figures, most of them based on contemporary estimates by Western observers, for the various regions of Palestine during the first three-quarters of the 19th century. Moreover, when compared to available data for Nablus from the 16th and the late 19th centuries, it seems that the pattern of Nablus's demographic development differs from what the proponents of Ottoman decline and modernization theses have argued.2 Instead of decreasing during the so-called dark ages of Ottoman decline in the 17th and 18th centuries, Nablus's population increased significantly; and instead of growing robustly during the so-called period of modernization in the second half of the 19th century, it appears to have leveled off.

The Political Economy of Women's Liberation

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Margaret Benston
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Child Care ◽  
Household Labor ◽  
The Political ◽  
Household Work ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Huge Amount ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
Real Work ◽  
Special Category

In sheer quantity, household labor, including child care, constitutes a huge amount of socially necessary production. Nevertheless, in a society based on commodity production, it is not usually considered "real work" since it is outside of trade and the market place. This assignment of household work as the function of a special category women means that this group does stand in a different relation to production than the group men. Except for the very rich, who can hire someone to do it, there is for most women, an irreducible minimum of necessary labor involved in caring for home, husband, and children. Household work remains a matter of private production.

“Commodity Sui Generis”

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (S1) ◽  
pp. 75-99
Author(s):  
Oleg Ananyin ◽  
Denis Melnik
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Theoretical Issue ◽  
The Political ◽  
Socialist Economy ◽  
Economic Discourse ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
Stable Core ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Different Levels

The article traces trends in Soviet economic discourse from the 1920s until perestroika. We examine the works of leading political economists of this period through the lens of debates on market exchanges under socialism—the central theoretical issue of the political economy of socialism. The discursive structure underlying the debates can be traced back to the writing of the first Soviet textbook on political economy, personally supervised by Joseph Stalin. Our purpose is to assess the impact of this textbook on subsequent discussions of the role of commodity production and market exchanges in a socialist economy. The story suggests that Soviet economic discourse was neither homogeneous nor stable. Rather, it consisted of several subdiscourses of different levels of authoritativeness allowing for a certain stable core as an attribute of any authoritative discourse, as well as for more flexible elements that adjusted the structure to new political and ideological challenges.

Coercive commodities and the political economy of involuntary consumption: The case of the gambling industries

2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (12) ◽  
pp. 2762-2779 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Young ◽  
Francis Markham
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Best Interests ◽  
Monopoly Power ◽  
The Political ◽  
Credit System ◽  
Sale Price ◽  
Working Classes ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Commodity Production ◽  
Secondary Exploitation

Coercive commodities are those goods and services that promote ‘akratic’ consumption – that consumption recognised by consumers themselves to be contrary to their own best interests, all things considered. The production of coercive commodities has become an increasingly significant economic project of fractions of the capitalist class. As a form of secondary exploitation, coercive commodities facilitate the extraction of surplus profits from the savings and assets of the working classes, thus impeding the accumulation of a workers’ hoard that may act as a potential blockage to value realisation in consumption. We use the example of commercial gambling to illustrate the political economy of coercive commodity production. The gambling production system is driven by a core dynamic between spatially fixed capital, the pressures of competition, and the technological generation of akrasia. The geographical expression of this dynamic is determined by the contingencies of the ‘harm maximisation’ policies of the state and the political efforts of individual capitalists to gain and reproduce monopoly power. Gambling production is effective as a form of secondary exploitation because, in addition to the profits accrued by exploiting labour, it extracts surplus profits by diverging sale price from value, by harnessing monopoly power, and by increasing the volume of consumption through akrasia. It is this extractive power, amplified by the consumer credit system, that forms the basis of the systemic utility of coercive commodities in late capitalist economies.

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