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  • © 2022

How Labor Powers the Global Economy

A Labor Theory of Capitalism

  • Develops a probabilistic approach for studying the role of labor in capitalist economies
  • Offer new insights into the dynamics of growth, wages and accumulation in capitalist development
  • Shows how labor and workers at all levels represent the true motor of social economic development

Part of the book series: New Economic Windows (NEW)

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Table of contents (9 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
  2. Introduction and Major Propositions

    • Emmanuel D. Farjoun, Moshé Machover, David Zachariah
    Pages 1-7
  3. Foundations

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 9-9
    2. Production and Labor

      • Emmanuel D. Farjoun, Moshé Machover, David Zachariah
      Pages 11-19
    3. Probabilistic Framework

      • Emmanuel D. Farjoun, Moshé Machover, David Zachariah
      Pages 21-40
    4. Labor Content—Properties and Postulates

      • Emmanuel D. Farjoun, Moshé Machover, David Zachariah
      Pages 41-47
  4. Results

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 49-49
    2. Law of Decreasing Labor Content

      • Emmanuel D. Farjoun, Moshé Machover, David Zachariah
      Pages 51-73
    3. Wages and Class  Divisions

      • Emmanuel D. Farjoun, Moshé Machover, David Zachariah
      Pages 75-88
    4. Limits to Growth and   Accumulation

      • Emmanuel D. Farjoun, Moshé Machover, David Zachariah
      Pages 89-102
  5. Futures

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 103-103
    2. Limits to Capitalist Development

      • Emmanuel D. Farjoun, Moshé Machover, David Zachariah
      Pages 105-110
    3. Open Problems of Transition

      • Emmanuel D. Farjoun, Moshé Machover, David Zachariah
      Pages 111-117
  6. Back Matter

    Pages 119-154

About this book

This book presents a probabilistic approach to studying the fundamental role of labor in capitalist economies and develops a non-deterministic theoretical framework for the foundations of political economy. By applying the framework to real-world data, the authors offer new insights into the dynamics of growth, wages, and accumulation in capitalist development around the globe.
 
The book demonstrates that a probabilistic political economy based on labor inputs enables us to describe central organizing principles in modern capitalism. Starting from a few basic assumptions, it shows that the working time of employees is the main regulating variable for determining strict numerical limits on the rate of economic growth, the range of wages, and the pace of accumulation under the present global economic system. This book will appeal to anyone interested in how the capitalist mode of production works and its inherent limitations; in particular, it will be useful toscholars and students of Marxian economics.

“Emmanuel Farjoun and Moshé Machover, follow up their pathbreaking work on the application of statistical physics methods to political economy in this book with David Zachariah, in which they develop methods for making educated and structured estimates of stylized facts applicable to capitalist economies. There’s a lot for economists and anyone interested in the political economy of capitalism to learn from their reasoning on these issues, including their novel and challenging suggestion of bounds on the rates of increase of use-value productivity of labor, and on the range of variation of the wage share.”

Duncan K. Foley, Leo Model Professor of Economics, New School for Social Research

Authors and Affiliations

  • Mathematics department, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

    Emmanuel D. Farjoun

  • King's College London, London, UK

    Moshé Machover

  • Associate Professor, Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    David Zachariah

About the authors

Emmanuel Farjoun and Moshé Machover are mathematicians at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel) and King's College London (United Kingdom). They have a long-standing interest in political economy from a labor economics perspective. They published Laws of Chaos in 1983, a book that developed a probabilistic approach to political economy. David Zachariah is an engineer and has written several articles on political economy.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access