POL 3102 Lecture Notes - Circular Reasoning, Barter
11 Apr 2014
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Document Summary
The way we live is made possible by the way we work: previous modes of production are inefficient compared to modern modes of production, our mode of production shapes our lives. Labour in the sense of productive activity is the essence of life: locke: owning something is mixing our labour with it. Marx: takes ideas of classical economists and breaks them down, analyzes them: says: economists have ideas but do not bother breaking down what they mean. Capital: subject is political economy (economics with a political aspect: starts with the fact of private property: does not explain it to us- conceives a material process in abstract formulas which have the value of laws. Existing economic forms are taken for granted. Basic problem: assumes workers only have/should only have labour to barter with: in this system, a worker becomes a commodity. The worker becomes stuck in the production system and the value of their labour becomes contingent on supply and demand.
