Richard Westra and Alan Zuege (eds.) Value and the World Economy Today: Production, Finance and Globalization.

Richard Westra and Alan Zuege (eds.) Value and the World Economy Today: Production, Finance and Globalization Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, xiii + 246 pp. ISBN 1-403-90002-7 (hbk) 60 [pounds sterling]

This collective volume is divided into four parts and includes, apart from an introduction by the editors, twelve essays by well-known Marxist scholars reflecting a variety of different approaches to value theory and political economy. As noted in the introduction, 'The aim of this collection is to advance and encourage cross-fertilization between two literatures: the conceptual debate over the foundations of political economy and concrete research on the world economy today' (p. x).

Dealing with the relation between value theory and the study of contemporary capitalism, in the first essay, Ben Fine starts from a comparison between the Marxian and the Smithian and Ricardian theories of value. He stresses the following distinguishing features of Marx's value theory: (1) it is based on a dialectics corresponding to the reality under study; (2) it implies a particular understanding of class associated with the conflict between capital and labour; (3) it is attached to a particular understanding of structures; (4) it specifies the socioeconomic processes leading to the reproduction and transformation of structures; and (5) it refers in a historically specific way to the conditions prevailing under capitalist production. Under contemporary conditions, Fine suggests that 'the increasing complexity of capitalism simultaneously strengthens the case for the labor theory of value, to uncover underlying determinants, and strengthens the resolution of opponents in view of the apparent inconsistency of value with those complex outcomes' (p. 20).

In his contribution, S. Clarke analyses 'the rationality and irrationality of money', and concludes that this 'rationality' cannot be divorced from the specific rationality of the market and the underlying capitalist relations of production. He points out that, in contemporary conditions, the close integration of national economies implies their restriction within certain limits, and explains the reasons for the state's direct subordination to the expanded reproduction of capital. S. de Brunhoff examines the relationship between 'value, finance and social classes', by moving historically from gold as the 'general equivalent' to contemporary forms of money and finance. Regarding the class tension between capital and labour, she points out that wage moderation, through access to finance, may function as an element relaxing this tension.

In a very interesting essay--perhaps the most innovative in the book, and closely related to the book's title--Dick Bryan tackles the relation between value theory and international finance. Based on Palloix's spatial development of the circuit of capital, the author adds the dimension of time in order to consider globally integrated finance. As he points out, 'Global integration both transcends and at the same time reproduces (national) difference' (p. 60). So the author poses the crucial question: 'how is this "difference" crossed concretely, such that we can talk about capital (and class) as a global phenomenon despite the reproduction of spatial (and temporal) difference?' (p. 62). Although the sources of discontinuity between different sorts of money and commodities, and hence in the value of capital, cannot be eradicated, it is argued that it is mainly through the transactions of various forms of financial derivatives that these discontinuities are continually bridged. So 'For Marxian analysis, derivatives secure commensuration of value across time and space' (p. 67). Amongst other things, this mechanism serves to 're-focus the process of competition on all capital (and the circuit of capital) rather than just on transnational corporations' (p. 68). The merit of this type of analysis is also that 'The focus on profit-making thereby reverts squarely to the appropriation of surplus value from labor, only now the focus on surplus value appropriation is made within a global calculation' (ibid.).

Three of the contributions to this volume--those by R. Westra, T. Sekine and R. Albritton--follow Uno's approach to political economy, which can be considered as a kind of equilibrium economic approach. On the other hand, the essays contributed by A. Freeman and A. Kliman follow a temporal (dis-equilibrium) analysis in their approach to value production and crisis. Freeman's intention is to show that 'an alternative, Temporal Single System Interpretation (TSSI) of Marx's value theory offers a coherent explanation of the major observable manifestations of market breakdown' (p. 93). He also refers to 'long waves' and the current process of restructuring, and attempts to identify the preconditions and the features of a potential new accumulation upturn. A. Kliman scrutinises underconsumption theories of crisis and 'physicalist' theories, which imply that productivity increases raise the rate of profit. On the contrary, he demonstrates that capitalist crises are rooted in capitalism's production of value as an end in itself.

G. Dumenil and D. Levy suggest a dual theory of value regarding production and management, which corresponds to the familiar distinction between productive and unproductive labour. However, their 'physicalist' interpretation both of the theory of value and crisis, as well as of the real subsumption under capital, is rather untenable. They consider the expansion of managerial labour, which they characterise as 'profit rate maximizing labor', as the main countertendency to the falling rate of profit, but have great difficulty in giving an adequate explanation of the efficiency of this labour, and thus in explaining the upswing and downswing of accumulation in the post-war period. Fred Moseley, on the contrary, following a more orthodox Marxian approach, argues that a faster increase of unproductive labour (not producing profit) than productive labour will cause a profit-rate decline, and this is what happened in the post-war us economy. That profit-rate decline was due to an increase in the capital invested per worker, as well as to an increase in the ratio of unproductive labour to productive labour. Moseley also stresses that the 'globalisation' of capital in recent decades is mainly the result of a search for lower wages in order to increase the rate of profit, and that another period of capitalist expansion will require a prior prolonged period of depression.

Adopting a critical stance and a debatable Sraffian approach regarding the labour theory of value, Ajit Sinha argues that, after Sraffa's (1960) contribution, 'any search for an ultimate cause of value is futile. Prices are simply implicated in a given structure of production and distribution and nothing is hidden behind them' (p. 184-85).

Regarding the Unoist approach followed by three of the contributors to this volume (Westra, Sekine and Albritton) it must be said that, although it contains some useful insights, the present reviewer at least is not convinced of its overall tenability. Amongst other things, this approach implies a rather unsatisfactory periodisation of capitalism associated with the provisioning of certain basic goods. Westra's work, in particular, starts to fill a lacuna, in terms of political economy research, in the globalisation literature.

His task, however, is rather inadequately attained insofar as the proposed Unoist conception of a theory of a pure capitalist system (TPCS) is overtly and artificially abstract. This implies, on the one hand, an abstraction from specific power relations and the state, and a combined articulation with other modes of production. On the other hand, and because of the uneven and non-universal development of world capitalism, it leads Westra to an unclear, 'transformationist' and rather sceptical approach to the issue of globalisation. Based on the same approach and a developed TPCS, T. Sekine stresses the de-commodification of money and labour, especially through state regulation and the social-democratic welfare state, as well as the elimination of the decennial (Juglar) cycles, in order to end up with the debatable conclusion that 'the present world economy is in the process of ex-capitalist transition' (p. 195); and that 'the mechanism of the law of value, which constituted the lifeblood of capitalism, has definitely ceased to operate in the contemporary economy' (p. 202). R. Albritton finally attempts to theorise subjectivity, within the same context of a TPCS and the stage of capitalism (the post-war period) characterised as 'consumerism'. Apart from any methodological disagreements, it must be noted that Albritton presents some highly interesting insights regarding the indifference of value production to use-value, the increasing speeding-up of production, consumption and life (the 'treadmill effect'), and the parallel trends of integration-homogenisation and qualitative differentiation-redivision of world capitalism.

Overall, and apart from any methodological differences, the present volume constitutes a useful guide to the present state of affairs in the theory of value and political economy in general, as well as to relevant studies of dynamically restructuring world capitalism.