Adam Smith’s Concept of Value of Labor. Anglo-American Perspective till Mid-19th Century

Author(s): Magdalena Modrzejewska / Language(s): English / Issue: 25/2017

The aim of this paper is to investigate applicability of Adam Smith’s Labor Theory of Value (LTV) and present both: the development of Adam Smith’s LTV as well as the early Anglo-American respond to the thesis that lab-our is real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities. The research problem and methods: Paper analyses premises that led Adam Smith to formulate his thesis that the labor it the only common measure of all value; as well as the reasons for critiques and appraisals of Smith’s thesis. Using analytical methods, as Frederic Beiser defined it, paper will “identify the problem behind a passage, the question the author is attempting to answer, (…) reconstruct the arguments the author gives for its solution, i.e., formulate them into premises and conclusion [and] (…) appraise these arguments, determining their formal validity and the quality of the evidence for them.” The process of argumentation: After taking preliminary considerations on development of Smith’s theory the paper examines the earliest critique by the Anglo-American thinker Thomas Pownall. Finally, to investigate shortcomings of Pownall’s criticism, the paper explores various British and American attempts to implement LTV in Utopian experiments and validate ac curacy of Smith’s assumptions in practice. Research results: The result of the study is to clarify the Smith’s LTV concept and present it in new light, without the Marxist distortion given to it by both: Karl Marx itself and Marxists supporters. Conclusions, innovations and recommendations: This proves that no matter how disputable and undefined the LTV concept might be, and besides all imperfections of LTV theory emphasized by Pownall, under specific circumstances it might be implemented into practice. The paper focuses on pre-Ricardian economy and Utopian social experiment and there fore it provides new context of analysis does not intend to present the Marxist variations on LTV.

Adam Smith’s natural liberty system

Author(s): Janina Godłów-Legiędź / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2016

The aim of the article is to show the falsity of the dominant perception of Adam Smith’s doctrine. In the context of different interpretations, the paper draws attention to four issues. Firstly, the formalistic revolution in economics contributed to ignoring the institutional dimension of the market mechanism. Secondly, the idea of natural liberty emerged as a reaction to the mercantilist policy and was directed not against the sovereign as such but against policies advancing particular interests. Thirdly, the liberty was to serve not only the capital and the employer but, above all, the labor and the employee. Fourthly, the Smithian market order is a form of metacoordination, hence John Nash's game theory cannot prove Smith's ideas wrong.

Administrative Costs of Taxation in the Slovak Republic

Author(s): Ladislav Pompura / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Administrative costs of taxation are for many years investigated by the economic theory and practice. They are connected with the principle of effectiveness of taxation and the goal for any state is to collect taxes relatively as cheap as possible. The goal of this paperis to present our data about the administrative costs of taxation in Slovakia and to compare results with the situation in other developed countries. We decided to use the already existing and tested Czech methodology to calculate results, to be able to obtain comparable data. Our results suggest that the administrative costs of taxation in Slovakia, expressed by the percentage of costs to tax revenues, are higher than in almost all comparable countries – some actions to improve this situation would be necessary.

Afektywne dostrojenia i sprawczość w czasach późnego industrializmu

Author(s): Marek Pawlak / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 4/2018

The article explores the context of the expansion of Opole Power Plant, which has fuelled new migration patterns in the region of Dobrzeń Wielki. By drawing on the ethnographic fieldwork among construction workers working at the expansion site and living temporarily in the region, it aims to problematise the relationship between their mobile livelihood, agency and affective attunements. It argues that the emergence of late industrialism, which coincided with the neoliberal reconfigurations of global political economy, has produced different modes of uncertainties, forced flexibilities and rather bleak futures.

AFIRMIRANJE I ZAGOVARANJE ENERGETSKE POLITIKE U FUNKCIJI EKONOMSKOG RASTA I RAZVOJA

Author(s): Emir Tahirović / Language(s): Bosnian / Issue: 2/2019

One of the most crucials and most important sectors in contemporary countrys is energetic sector. Development of energetic sectors and energetic potencials deeply depends on one countrys position on the global scale. Countrys with well developed energy sector are key players and global actors of all events in the world. Countrys as such clearly and precisly formulated and implemented energetic politics into practice realising in the right way their importance for future growth. However, energetic politics althou crucial and important for countrys developments, especially those less or non developed in new times find themself in front of constant obsticles. External effects that take place when energetic potencial is activated got into global policys eye. Advocates of enviormental protection are strongly against growth and developments of energetic sector because of external effects that sector produces. This problem is only posible to solve by adequately harmonising energetic politicsand enviormentl protection politics,since both of those public sector policys are important to one country. Conclusion is that how by adovacy of energetic public policys should be present, but with requierd respect for other public policys, mainly enviromental protection policy. Adequete implementing depends on theyr synchronisation of sustainable life.

AFRICA’S EXTERNAL TRADE RELATIONS: FROM DEPENDENCE TO AGENCY?

Author(s): Garth Le Pere / Language(s): English / Issue: 2/2019

Africa’s development and growth challenges will increasingly be shaped by Agenda 2063 and the African Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) as new continental blueprints for integration. These challenging blueprints must also be situated in the role and shifting interests of Africa’s external trade and development partners. This relates particularly to its historically-defined engagements with the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) which have only served to reinforce and underscore Africa’s marginality and dependence. These engagements are rendered more complex with the entry of China and India onto the African geo-political landscape, especially whether these two countries provide an alternate regime for trade and development cooperation that give African countries greater decision-making agency, policy space, and strategic choice. Given these shifting vectors, this article will assess Africa’s trade relations with two of its most important traditional partners, the EU and the US; and with two of its most important emerging partners, China and India. These analytical portraits have direct implications for Africa’s future industrial development and economic growth and the extent to which it can collectively move away from a history of external dependence to determining its own destiny.

Agrarne początki kapitalizmu

Author(s): Ellen Meiksins Wood / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 26/2017

This article presents the underlying assumptions and main arguments of "political Marxism." The author shows how and why the beginning of capitalism should be primarily associated with the countryside and agriculture, and secondarily with the city and trade. The subordination of food production processes to the imperatives of capitalism determines capitalism’s revolutionary character. The main reason for that lies in the transformation of the processes responsible for the reproduction of the whole society and not only for the distribution or redistribution of surpluses.

Agricultural and Rural Capital Markets in the EU Candidate Countries: Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Turkey

Author(s): Štefan Bojnec / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2011

This paper analyses agricultural and rural capital factor markets in the three European Union candidate countries: Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic (FYR) of Macedonia and Turkey. Aggregate capital market indicators and their dynamics, and factors driving agricultural and rural capital markets are analysed and compared in these countries. In general, agricultural and rural capital markets show similarities with general capital market developments, but agricultural and rural capital markets are facing specific credit constraints related to agricultural assets and rural fixed asset specificities, which constrain their mortgages and collateral use. Credit market imperfections have limited access to the investment credits necessary for there structuring of small-scale individual farms. Government transfers are used to differing extents in the candidate countries, but generally tend to increase over time. Remittances and donor funds have also played an important role in agricultural and rural economy investments.

Akcja Oszczędnościowa i jej wpływ na reorganizację ustroju i zmianę kompetencji Prokuratorii Generalnej Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej w 1924 r.

Author(s): Marek Tkaczuk / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 1/2007

Aktualnost Engelsovog teksta - Razvitak socijalizma od utopije do nauke

Author(s): Vera Vratuša / Language(s): Serbian / Publication Year: 0

This work examines the actuality of Engels’ text The Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science in the first fifth of the twenty–first century, taking into account the historical experience acquired within the hundred and forty years after its first release in 1880. The basic method used in the preparation of this work is the analysis of the content of Engels’ writings and its contextualisation within the historical specific social economic circumstances during the time of Engels’ life and today. The main finding of this work is that actuality of Engel’s text Development of Socialism from Utopia to Science rests on the continual existence of the capitalist mode of production internal contradictions, which, according to Engels, utopian socialism overlooked, but which scientific socialism has discovered through new historical materialist and dialectical study of class conflicts throughout human history. The main contradiction between the only socially usable production forces and private appropriation of the unapid for surplus labor of non possesing productive classes on the anarchic world market by the classes who posses the means of production, has not been overcome until our days. In the world proportions there still did not happen expected realisation of the revolutionary action of the exploited class of hired workers to create conditions for the leap into the realm of freedom, that is the taking of control of freely united producers over their own product. Elements of the utopianism of Engels’ writing originate from demoralizing pressure of the devastating consequences of the capitalist production mode, which reduces the conviction of potential subjects of revolutionary class alliance in the possibility of achieving the socialist “realm of freedom”. On the other hand, the author points out in this paper that in the case that there does not come to revolutionary leap from the realm of necessity of the anarchic capitalist merchandise production into the realm of freedom through the self–conscious and self organised revolutionary activity of all exploited and opressed classes, there wil come to the self–annihilation of the planet earth through human destructive, alienated and alienating action of acumulation of capital for the sake of acumulation, long before this annihilation was prediceted by Imanuel Kant and Laplace through the natural evolution of solar system.

Akumulacja pierwotna i czasowości kapitalizmu

Author(s): Joanna Bednarek / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 16/2015

The main thesis of the article is the statement that capitalism is composed of many different, incoherent temporalities, as well as that apprehension of capitalism from the angle of primitive accumulation enables the more accurate grasp of the modes of its functioning, including the complexity created by the interactions of the temporalities mentionned. The problem of primitive accumulation is, as Sandro Mezzadra proves, a good starting point for analysing this issue. It allows us to pose two questions: first, the question of the relation between the historical dimension and the structural logic of capitalism; second, the question of hierarchical relation between the center and the periphery of the capitalist system. Dipesh Chakrabarty’s project of ‘provincializing Europe’ proves helpful here, as it’s goal is deconstruction of the categories of progress, modernization and the capital with its abstract structure. The aim is not to negate the fact that capitalist abstraction is a real force, but to show that this force develops by means of constant assimiliation of the other – redefined as ‘backward’ or archaic. The linear scheme is in force, because it is the main mechanism of imposing the power of capital; as such, it is not politically neutral.

Alex Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth

Author(s): Szilárd Tóth / Language(s): English / Issue: 3/2016

Alex Gourevitch, From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth - Labor and Republican Liberty in the Nineteenth Century, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2015

Alienacja: problem wciąż aktualny. W nawiązaniu do myśli Karola Wojtyły–Jana Pawła II

Author(s): Andrzej Szostek Mic / Language(s): Polish / Issue: 4/2018

The author presents a brief outline of Karl Marx’s concepts of economic alienation and social revolution (the latter conceived of as fight for human emancipation) in order to confront them with Karol Wojtyla’s theory of participation, which is the main focus of the considerations. Unlike Marx, Wojtyla holds that, rather than the economic relations, it is the category of the ‘neighbor,’ together with the derivative commandment of love (“thou shalt love...”), that provide the deepest ground for participation. Therefore, Wojtyla emphasizes that the Marxist theory of alienation is essentially the antithesis of the theory of participation, while the postulate of a class-struggle-based revolution, which follows from the theory of alienation, deepens the condition in question rather than contributes to overcoming it. In the concluding part of the paper, the author refers to the fact that Pope John Paul II did not consider overcoming the so-called socialist system, which began in 1989, as the end of working against alienation. Rather, he would stress that the problem of alienation is still acute, since alienation is now engendered by materialistic consumer attitudes which undermine the possibilities of participation. The author holds that the mark of the consumer mentality characteristic primarily of Western societies is that their members are no longer aware of the alienation they experience and, consequently, they no longer strive to overcome this condition.

Alternative

Author(s): Branko Horvat / Language(s): Croatian / Issue: 12/2001

Bruto nacionalni proizvod neke zemlje može se razdijeliti na različite načine. Konkretno, može se razdijeliti tako da bolje zadovoljava manje hitne nego hitnije potrebe. U tom je slučaju opće blagostanje stanovništva ispod objektivno postizive razine. Ovaj jednostavni zdravorazumski pristup potiče dobro poznate i goleme analitičke i teoretske probleme. Ako prihvatimo - kao što se to općenito čini - da međupersonalne usporedbe blagostanja nisu moguće ili opravdane, tada izgleda da nema objektivnih kriterija za prosuđivanje relativne hitnosti potreba. Uz to, opće blagostanje ovisi ne samo o raspodjeli, već i o proizvodnji. Stoga imamo zamku povratne sprege u sistemu koji ne možemo mjeriti - jasnu analitički mrtvu točku.

Aluminij d.d. Mostar na isteku mandata Vlade FBiH - Oktobar 2018. godine -

Author(s): Samir Mušović / Language(s): Bosnian / Publication Year: 2018

Nije rijetkost da se značajni društveni i privredni problemi, slučajno ili namjerno, lansiraju u javnost usred predizborne kampanje ili u prva 3-4 mjeseca novog mandatnog perioda. Podešavanje objave vijesti o krupnim aferama i krupnim društvenim problemima u predizbornom periodu ili u prvim mjesecima novih mandata nije slučajno: javna pažnja je zasićena izbornom kampanjom i dodatno, kao u ovom slučaju, dokazanim odsustvom javne pažnje uobičajenim za mjesece ljetnih godišnjih odmora (dovoljno se prisjetiti najpoznatijih vremenskih podešavanja objave loših vijesti u slučajevima poskupljenja osnovnih namirnica i usluga, koje se ćešće objavljuju u trećem večernjem dnevniku, a znatno rjeđe u udarnom terminu drugog TV dnevnika). Tako su vijesti, objavljene krajem mjeseca juna 2018. godine, vezane za smjenu direktora Aluminija d.d. Mostar i istovremena objava vijesti da to preduzeće ima akumulirani gubitak blizu 180 miliona Eura, zadržale javnu pažnju na problemima preduzeća Aluminij Mostar čak i kraće od «tri dana BiH čuđenja», koliko se BiH javnost uobičajeno zadržava na tzv. udarnim problemima.

Amerikanski eksperimenat

Author(s): Milan Ćurčin / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 03/1934

Kada bi nešto danas besmrtni Servantes imao da šalje svoga Don Kihota da se za svoje ideale bori protiv ovaca i vetrenjača, bio bi u najvećoj nedoumici, po kakvoj narodnosti da svoga junaka krsti, osobito ako je bio uveren da se dogadjaji u svetu odigravaju predvidjanjima i voljom samih ljudi. Samo što, govoreći o Don Kihotu u vezi s privrednim vetrenjačama, mi njega ne uzimamo kao tragičnu figuru, figuru idealista i sanjalice, već ga uzimamo onako kako ga shvata široka publika.

An Analysis of Dynamic Changes in Selected Areas of Sustainable Development of the European Union Countries

Author(s): Iwona Bąk,Katarzyna Cheba / Language(s): English / Issue: 1/2018

The aim of the study is to determine the pace and directions of changes (understood as: improvement or deterioration) occurring in selected areas of sustainable development of EU Member States. The paper analyzes dynamics of changes in selected areas of sustainable development monitored on the basis of headline indicators published by Eurostat from 2008 to 2015. In the paper, three variants of reference points of synthetic measure of development were considered. On the basis of the obtained results, the countries in which the improvement in the sustainable development and its deterioration can be observed were identified. The results have confirmed the existence of significant developmental disparities between EU Member States in this field, but it should be noted that the obtained results depend on the methodological approach both to the selection of features and the adoption of a specific standardization formula, as well as the considered variants of reference points. The results obtained can be utilized in subsequent years to examine the directions of change observed both from the point of view of European Union as one organization, and the individual EU Member States.

An Analysis of the Impact of Economic Growth, Political Instability and Exchange Rate on Tourism Growth in South Africa

Author(s): Daniel Francois Meyer / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

Globally the tourism sector is one of the main economic sectors in attracting and generating foreign revenue. The sector accounts for seven percent of global foreign revenue as an export industry. In South Africa the low growth environment over the last decade has resulted in the need to find alternative economic sectors in support to traditional sectors such as mining and manufacturing, to drive higher levels of economic growth in the country. The aim of this study was to analyse the relationship between tourism as the dependent variable, and economic growth, exchange rate changes and political stability, as independent variables. The study region selected is South Africa, which is classified as a developing country and is in many cases seen as the proxy for emerging economies. This study followed a quantitative research approach with time series data from 1996 to 2017. The relationships between the variables were analysed by means of the Johansen cointegration, Vector Error Correction and Granger causality econometric models. The results indicated that there are both long and short-run relationships between the variables. A number of policy recommendations that could potentially contribute to the extension of the role of tourism in development include improved political and currency stability in the country as well as the relaxation of visa requirements.

An Austro-Libertarian Critique of Public Choice

Author(s): Thomas J. DiLorenzo,Walter E. Block / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 2016

We do not say that the Public Choice School has not made any positive contribution to political economy. It has. The originators of it, James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, along with their many followers and collaborators, have done important work on rational voter theory, setting up a meeting agenda, game theory, etc. Nor can we object to the application of economic theory to political issues. Far from it. However, the present book seeks to uncover its many failures. For example, the fact that underneath the veneer of its supposed adherence to value-free positive analysis lies a value-laden support for statism. To wit, its emphasis and reliance on “theoretical unanimity” not the actual unanimity incorporated in every commercial act under free enterprise. We also take issue with its nomenclature “rent seeking” albeit not the concept itself. Why pick on innocuous “rent” to describe crony capitalism?

AN ECONOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF STOCK MARKET REACTION TO ABRUPT POLITICAL EVENTS: EMERGING MARKET EVIDENCE FROM INDIA

Author(s): Chandrapala Pathirawasam / Language(s): English / Publication Year: 0

There is extensive argument that political risk is an imperative and increasing influence on international portfolio allocation decisions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relation between abrupt political events and stock returns of Bombay Stock Exchange in India. The issue is examined using a dummy variable regression model controlled for the effect of lag market returns.