Download Politics, Regulation and the Modern Welfare State by Jacob Torfing (auth.) PDF

Show description

In order to show how this simultaneous process of production and reproduction actually takes place, Marx undertakes a detailed analysis of the production and circuit of industrial capital at the level of single capitals as well as at the level of total social capital. This analysis is carried out both in the case of simple reproduction where the capitalist consumes the entire amount of surplus value, and in the case of extended reproduction where the capitalist consumes only a portion of it and converts the rest into money (ibid.

However, Cohen has subsequently admitted that `rationality does not always favour productive innovation, even where it is possible to achieve it' (Cohen, 1988: 26). Nevertheless, he insists that even if there is no universal imperative to improve the productive forces, the development thesis still holds as a long-run tendency, since there will always be some countries where progress occurs, and since, over time, the productive improvements will spread to all countries (ibid. 27). But, by so weakening the development thesis that it becomes a global `torch-relay' thesis (compare Gellner, 1980), Cohen seriously undermines the primacy thesis, which says that the nature of the productive relations is explained by the development of the productive forces.

If Marx succeeded in showing how, at the level of single capitals, various forms of capital are transformed through interconnected circuits which finally maintain and replace them, his analysis was based upon the assumption that the capitalist, unproblematically, first converts the component parts of his capital into money by the sale of his commodities and subsequently reconverts this money into new productive capital by the purchase of elements of production. However, it remains to be shown how this assumption can be sustained at the level of total social capital, of which the single capitals form only fractional parts.