Course Description
Course: Marxist Political Economy II
Code: PEC462
Semester: B
Instructor: A. Maniatis
This course explores the analysis of Marx in Volumes II and III in “Capital” and many of the contributions of current Marxist political economy. After some further discussion of the labor theory of value, the formation of the general rate of profit and the transformation of surplus value into profit and direct prices into prices of production, the course discusses the Marxian theory of competition and contrasts it with Marxist theories of monopoly capital. Then the theory of productive and unproductive labor is developed and its importance for the transformation of orthodox national accounts categories into the corresponding Marxist ones is discussed. Finally, the Marxist theories of crisis and especially Marx’s law of the falling rate of profit are discussed and the course concludes with a discussion of the main characteristics of current welfare capitalism.
Textbook:
Th. Maniatis, P. Tsaliki and L. Tsoulfidis, Issues in Political Economy: The Case of Greece, Sakis Karagiorgas Foundation: Scientific Library, Athens, 1999 (Θ. Μανιάτης, Π. Τσαλίκη, Λ. Τσουλφίδης, Ζητήματα Πολιτικής Οικονομίας: Η Περίπτωση της Ελλάδας, Ίδρυμα Σάκη Καράγιωργα: Επιστημονική Βιβλιοθήκη, Αθήνα, 1999).
Other sources:
-G. Catephores, An Introduction to Marxist Economics, New York University Press, New York, 1989.
-Ε. Mandel, Long Waves of Capitalist Development, Verso, London, 1995.
-R. Brenner, The economics of global turbulence, London, Verso, 2006.