Value and Crisis brings together selected essays written by Alfredo Saad-Filho. This book examines the labour theory of value and its implications for the nature of neoliberalism, financialisation, inflation, monetary policy, and the crises of contemporary capitalism.

The book presents a high-impact re-reading of core topics in the Marx and Marxist debates including: value-theory, the commodity-nature of money, complex or skilled labour, the determination of the value of labour-power and the nature of extraordinary surplus value. Drawing on this literature, the book provides original and innovative insights into key controversies in contemporary capitalism such as the increasingly intellectual character of commodity-producing labour, the emergence of global value chains, the relevance of ground-rent bearing commodities, and the specific, uneven developmental dynamics of "resource-rich" countries in the global process of capital accumulation. Contributing to the renewed vitality of critical studies of the economic works of Karl Marx, this book will be essential reading for all those interested in contemporary debates within Marxism, as well as readers of political economy, economics, development studies and economic sociology.

"The book presents a high-impact re-reading of core topics in the Marx and Marxist debates including: value-theory, the commodity-nature of money, complex or skilled labour, the determination of the value of labour-power and the nature of extraordinary surplus value. Drawing on this literature, the book provides original and innovative insights into key controversies in contemporary capitalism such as the increasingly intellectual character of commodity-producing labour, the emergence of global value chains, the relevance of ground-rent bearing commodities, and the specific, uneven developmental dynamics of "resource-rich" countries in the global process of capital accumulation. Contributing to the renewed vitality of critical studies of the economic works of Karl Marx, this book will be essential reading for all those interested in contemporary debates within Marxism, as well as readers of political economy, economics, development studies and economic sociology"--

In this slim, insightful volume, noted economist Samir Amin returns to the core of Marxian economic thought: Marx’s theory of value. He begins with the same question that Marx, along with the classical economists, once pondered: how can every commodity, including labor power, sell at its value on the market and still produce a profit for owners of capital? While bourgeois economists attempted to answer this question according to the categories of capitalist society itself, Marx sought to peer through the surface phenomena of market transactions and develop his theory by examining the actual social relations they obscured. The debate over Marx’s conclusions continues to this day. Amin defends Marx’s theory of value against its critics and also tackles some of its trickier aspects. He examines the relationship between Marx’s abstract concepts—such as “socially necessary labor time”—and how they are manifested in the capitalist marketplace as prices, wages, rents, and so on. He also explains how variations in price are affected by the development of “monopoly- capitalism,” the abandonment of the gold standard, and the deepening of capitalism as a global system. Amin extends Marx’s theory and applies it to capitalism’s current trajectory in a way that is unencumbered by the weight of orthodoxy and unafraid of its own radical conclusions.

This book is about the most recent phase or stage of capitalist development: neoliberal globalization. Neoliberalism, as much a political project as an economic one, is still pervasive, and it continues to provide the general framework for politics and political imagination across most of the globe. The book brings together a group of scholars from different parts of the world looking at the impact of neoliberalism on societies. And, as such, it contributes as much to the critique and overcoming of this process as to its analysis. With its extensive coverage, both geographically and thematically, the book will be of interest for students of the social sciences, as well as for anyone making an effort to understand and change the world. (Series: Politics, Society, and Community in a Globalizing World - Vol. 15)

This republication of a long out-of-print collection of essays, first published in 1979, focuses on the elusive concept of “value.” The field of study surrounding the theory of value remains comparatively sparse in Anglophone circles, and the essays here aim to answer the question, “Why is Marx’s theory of value important?”

This book constitutes an overview of recent developments in political economy in general, and Marxist value theory in particular. The implications of value theory for bank credit, inflation and deflation are fully explored.