Economics in real time : a theoretical reconstruction / John McDermott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

McDermott, John.

Series:

Advances in heterodox economics

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Microeconomics.

Time and economic reactions.

Prices.

Value.

Human capital.

Physical Description:

viii, 217 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2004]

Summary:

This book offers a new model for contemporary economic behavior that accounts for changes since neoclassical and Marxian microeconomics were formulated over a century ago. By incorporating real time into the analysis of sales and purchases, the phenomena of product innovation, advertising and distribution, the provision of consumer credit, and, ultimately, the production of a changing workforce all become intrinsic to microeconomic analysis rather than being treated as extraneous to fundamental theory.

Economics in Real Time transforms the analysis of contemporary sales and purchases. In mainstream economics the series of purchases, say, of a personal computer, then of software upgrades, peripherals, on-line services, and even support services are analyzed as discrete, essentially unrelated transactions. However counterintuitive, this approach is theoretically necessary to sustain the free-market narrative, its price and general equilibrium theories, and its efficiency and welfare theorems. Economics in Real Time instead links such related purchases within what is called a "sale/purchase state" occupying the time interval that begins with the initial purchase of the PC and ends only when all of the PC's services have been exchanged to the buyer. Under this analysis, typical contemporary sale/purchase states, as for automobiles, benefit plans, and electronic goods, place the purchaser in continuing, often dependent relationships to multiple sellers, at least some of which were not even overt partners to the initial purchase. Moreover they typically impose a continuing stream of expenditures upon the purchaser, as for automobile upkeep or music CDs, and so forth.

Economics in Real Time analyzes a contemporary economy as shaped in both its narrowly economic and broadly social features by these sale/purchase states. It draws a radically different picture of its terrain, challenging at the most fundamental level both the relevance and the theoretical warrant of the free-market conception.

Contents:

Introduction: Microeconomic Time 1

1 Rethinking Economic Behavior 6

Economics, Microeconomics, and Ideology 6

A Socially Fabricated Work Force: Implications 7

Bringing Time into Microeconomics: Alternate Approaches 10

Introducing Positive Time 13

What Is the Relationship between the Two Microeconomics? 18

Ideal Types and Conundrums 19

A Further Conundrum 21

What Is Lost in a Micro That Encompasses Real Time? 22

Free Markets and Free Society? 23

2 What Is a "Commodity"? 26

Microeconomics and Commodity Form 26

Commodity Form 28

Value Forms in the Sphere of Exchange 29

Aristotelian Marxism 31

The Second, Third, and Fourth Dimensions of the Commodity Form 36

The Victorian Adolescence of Capitalism 39

3 On the Social Relations of Distribution and Consumption 42

Social Relations of Consumption I: Administrative Relations 43

Social Relations of Consumption II: The Sale/Purchase State 45

Further Observations on Modern Sale/Purchase 47

"Engineered" Markets and Commodity Form 52

"Final" Consumption as Productive 57

4 Critical Commodity Theory 62

"Quasi Service" as Analytical Element 62

A Historical-Materialist Account 66

Implications for the Theory of Property 70

Commodity Fetishism and "False Experience" 74

5 The Commodity Form of Labor-Power 79

The Concept of the Social Labor-Power 79

Rethinking "the Labor Force" 80

Labor and Labor-Power 82

The Social Labor-Power 86

Courses/Channels and the Commodity Form of Labor-Power 87

Modal Courses 91

The Higher Courses 92

The "Worker" Courses 95

A Note on the Other Courses 97

Course, Commodity, and Conditions of Employment 98

6 Producing the Social Labor-Power 104

Human Capital Revisited 104

To (Re)produce Labor-Power 106

Varieties of Constrained Consumption 107

Mentors and Learners 114

Labor-Power as Commodity 117

7 Price and Value 119

The Value Subsystem 119

Rejecting the Subsystem 121

The Troubling Status of Value 125

Reformulating Value Theory 128

Naturally and Socially Imposed Constraints 132

Value Expanded 137

8 Amplifying, Confirming, and Proposing 141

The Cost of Change 141

The Courses as Functional Units of Capital 142

The Altered Role of Money 145

The Money Form of Value Superseded 147

What Is Capital? 150

How Should We Evaluate Capital's Performance? 155

On the Tension between Prices and Values 158.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-207) and index.

ISBN:

0472113577

OCLC:

52412073