In recent years, the public sphere, which represents a realm in civil society where people can debate and discuss a range of issues and common concerns important to them, has become a key area for research in the humanities and social sciences. Arguably, however, Marxist theory has yet to advance a theoretical account of the most abstract and simple ideological properties of the capitalist public sphere as these appear under universal commodity relationships. The paper therefore tentatively seeks to (...) develop such an account. Specifically, the paper theoretically derives a peculiar public sphere under capitalism, which is mediated between at least two commodity owners who also possess distinctive personalities driven by desires to own commodities. The paper then explains in more detail how the social form of this public sphere develops through other elements of commodity relations and their contradictions. (shrink)

In a letter to Engels (24 August 1867), Marx says that the best of his book (Capital) are (i) the “dual character of the labour embodied in commodities” and (ii) the surplus value theory. Marx's vindication of first point is the subject of the present article.1 We contend that the « dual character of the labour embodied in commodities » is a fundamental and specific property of a commodity society. Marx is right when he calls our attention to (...) it...... (shrink)

To this day, many theorists regard the commodity theory and the credit theory as the two main rival accounts of the nature of money. Yet cryptocurrency has revolutionized the institution of money in ways that most commodity and credit theorists could hardly have anticipated. Given that cryptocurrency is a new form of money, the question arises whether the commodity and credit theories can adequately account for it. I argue that they cannot. I first offer an (...) interpretation of the commodity and credit theories according to which these theories uphold differing claims about the origin of money, the ontology of money, and the function of money. I then argue that thus understood, neither theory can accommodate cryptocurrency. Finally, I develop a novel hybrid hylomorphic account of money which draws on aspects of both the commodity and credit theories, and I argue that this hybrid account can accommodate cryptocurrency. (shrink)

Marx's concept of production is not only in the sense of understanding of historical materialism, but should be placed in the entire history of Western philosophy to dialysis. The theory of commodity fetishism by the specific analysis, we believe that the duality of Marx's labor theory of sublimation of Kant's thing-in theory, the relations of production areas to expose the history of Western philosophy is the pursuit of the illusion of certainty of abstract identity, revealing the (...) dialectic essence of the historical circumstances and human relations. Relations of production within the context of a critical attitude towards both the change in the basic formulation of the question of philosophy, but also reshape the basic position of philosophy, history of philosophy to achieve great change. Marx's category of mode of production should not only be interpreted in sense of historical materialism but also be melted into the integration of western philosophy history. By the concrete analyzing on Marx's theory of commodity fetishism, we come to the conclusion that not only was the theory of duality of labor as sublimation on Kant's theory of object in itself, but also Marx's category of relationship of production uncovered the abstract identity vision in which western philosophy have been in pursuit of the certitude from Enlightenment on, furthermore revealed the relation between core spirit of dialectic and human being 'historical circumstances. The critical attitude rooted into the theory of mode of production has changed the question mode as remolded the basic standpoint of philosophy and achieved the great transformation in philosophy history. (shrink)

This paper addresses problems related to transferring market concepts to non-market domains. More specifically it is about fallacies following from the use of the commodity concept in environmental valuation studies. First of all, the standard practice tends to misconstrue the ethical aspects related to environmental choices by forcing them into becoming ordinary trade-off problems. Second, the commodity perspective ignores important technical interdependencies within the environment and the relational character of environmental goods. These are all properties that have made (...) many such goods escape the commoditisation pressure of markets in the first place. Further, it is shown that these interdependencies are the source of some of the ethical dilemmas observed. Finally, inherent characteristics of the environment tend to make the concept of the margin, so indispensable to economic calculus, either difficult or irrelevant to define. The commodity 'fiction' twists the perception of the environment from systems preservation to items use or transformation. This is a problem of increased importance as we approach potential systems perturbations. (shrink)

Postcolonialism and decolonising campaigns are expressions of human pain on the level of identity confusion (inferiority), ideological abuse (cultural discrimination) and structural oppression (imperialistic exploitation). The slogan ‘Black Pain is a White Commodity’ in the #MustFall campaigns is critically analysed within the framework of postcolonial theory and imperialistic power categories. The basic hypothesis of the article is that in early Christianity, pantokrator images of God were influenced by iconography stemming mostly from the Roman Emperor cult and Egyptian mythology. (...) The power (omnipotence) and dominiumship of God directly and indirectly played a role in Christian imperialistic thinking regarding the expansion of the Kingdom of God and missio Dei strategies during times of European and colonial expansionism. In order to address the quest for ‘moving beyond’ in postcolonial theory, the impact of pantokrator-images of God on ecclesial thinking is researched. In order to contribute to sustainability and stability within the complexity of cultural diversity and current civil unrest on campuses in South Africa, the paracletic notion of compassionate being-with is developed within the framework of practical theological thinking. Instead of a Caesar-depiction, the theological notion of passio Dei is proposed: the decolonialising (post-imperialising) God. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1302-1328, November 2022. Robinson Crusoe is a mythic character who lives not only in the popular imaginary but through the history of political and social thought. Defoe’s protagonist lives marooned on his island, isolated and apart from society. The narrative is a perfect naturalisation of the ‘bourgeois’ world, dependent on an ontology of the self-sufficient individual. This article analyses this lineage in the social contract theory of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau. (...) Later, Hegel used the novel to illustrate his dialectic of mastery/servitude. Challenging the atomism of the state of nature, Hegel’s theory of recognition gives an account of positive freedom, where the individual is formed in and through social interdependence. This sociality is continued by Marx, who satirises Defoe's novel in his value-form critique of political economy. The value-form provides insight into Robinson's island labour and Marx's difference with Locke's labour theory of value. For Marx, the myth of ‘natural man’ hides the domination of capitalist development and Robinson Crusoe reflects the internalisation of the abstract rationality of commodity society. However, Marx's immanent critique of the novel points to a radical idea of social life and freedom. (shrink)

There have been several criticisms of Object-Oriented Ontology from the political Left. Perhaps the most frequent one has been that OOO’s aspiration to speak of objects apart from all their relations runs afoul of Marx’s critique of “commodity fetishism.” The main purpose of this article is to show that even a cursory reading of the sections on commodity in Marx’s Capital does not support such an accusation. For Marx, the sphere of entities that are not commodities is actually (...) quite wide, including all the beings of nature not subject to exchange, as well as bartered goods, and tithes and rents paid in kind to feudal lords. In short, the theory of commodity fetishism is a theory of v a l u e, not an anti-realist theory of b e i n g, and thus does not touch on OOO at all. In closing, I make some brief comments on Marx’s relation to Kantian formalism and to Heidegger’s famous account of present-at-hand and ready-to-hand. (shrink)

Many festivals use animals in the name of continuing traditions and religious acts of historical and cultural relevance, as well as for tourist entertainment; however, the welfare of these animals has been overlooked in favor of maintaining cultural identity or making economic profits. The criticism of animal-based festivals has been growing along with the increased public awareness of animal rights. However, this change in public perception has not yet been translated into actual government policies in Korea. This study addresses the (...) unethical practices and challenges regarding animal welfare at festivals from the perspective of visitors to understand the public perception of the need for institutional and regulatory interventions to improve the treatment of animals at festivals. An online survey (N = 1000) is conducted to examine the public perception of animals and animal welfare at festivals and how strongly online survey participants support organizer- and state-level actions to protect the welfare of festival animals. Logistic regression analyses identify gender, pet ownership, pro-animal attitude, visiting experience, sensitivity to criticism regarding animal issues, and perception of animal welfare at festivals as significant predictors of online survey participants’ support for actions ensuring the welfare of animals used in festivals. Our findings also suggest that people sympathize with the need to enhance animal welfare but have low levels of sensitivity to the maltreatment of animals at festivals, indicating the existence of cognitive dissonance. Establishing guidelines and regulations for improving animal welfare can help festivals use animals in a more sustainable way and make visitors rethink and re-establish human–animal relationships. (shrink)

Storage and Commodity Markets is primarily a work of economic theory, concerned with how the capability to store a surplus affects the prices and production of commodities. Its focus on the behaviour, over time, of aggregate stockpiles provides insights into such questions as how much a country should store out of its current supply of food considering the uncertainty in future harvests. Related topics covered include whether storage or international trade is a more effective buffer and whether stockpiles (...) are more useful in raw or processed form. Several chapters are devoted to analysing such government programmes as price bands, buffer stocks, and strategic reserves. This material is in the domain of applied welfare analysis with public finance. Because the theory presented is sufficiently general, it should be of interest to macroeconomists studying aggregate inventories or savings and to those in operations research studying inventory and pricing policies of large firms. (shrink)

People diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) may engage in what are called self-injurious acts. This paper situates self-injury within a larger cultural context in which body modifications are differently evaluated according to inscribed meanings. To provide a framework for ethical interactions with people diagnosed as BPD who self-injure, I draw on two concepts from theories of meaning: signification and uptake. I suggest possible significations of self-injury, but argue that clinicians have a duty to give uptake to the patient's own (...) interpretations of her behavior. Proper giving of uptake, which involves responding to others' communications such that the communicator's integrity is preserved, is crucial to ethical practices for clinicians, and uptake is never simply neutral or objective. This analysis suggests that sense-making about a client's self-injurious acts involves an understanding not only of the client's own interpretation of her behavior and its meaning, but also of the discursive production and function of such signs in our culture. I offer five maxims to guide the therapeutic process for clinicians working with self-injurious behavior in BPD patients. (shrink)

Neither Critical Theory nor western Marxism ever understood crises as being solely concerned with the economy. Both saw them rather as necessarily involving consciousness and subjectivity as well. How does Critical Theory conceptualize economy and subjectivity as inseparable? This is the crucial question. Critical Theory claims, indeed, that it shows the inner connection between the economy and subjectivity. In its first generation, at any rate, Critical Theory meant to show that the economy is a constitutive part (...) of subjectivity, while also being its blind spot; or even that the economy is its blind spot because it is essentially constructive of subjectivity. The article will specify the connection between the economy and subjectivity and then will indicate the blind spot. While Critical Theory does not fully pinpoint the blind spot in this connection, by tracing the discussion that followed its first generation we may better find out what this blind spot might be. (shrink)

The Paper is dedicated to philosophical fundamentals of the Marx’s theory of product value. The author proves that in the Marx’s theory the value of the product of labour and, correspondently, of the commodity is defined inaccurately. He thinks that the concept of labour, presented in the economic theory of K. Marx, undeservedly ignores the role of intellectual activity of an individual in production of material goods. Marx considered mental activity as integral part of physical labour. (...) This Marx’s viewpoint takes in account only the controlling mental activity of an individual in the process of labour. The author thinks that such form of labour existed only in conditions of primitive manufacture, when a worker himself invented the product of labour and then created it with the help of materialactivity. In the period of industrial production of material goods, starting from the late 18th century, the intellectual labour separated from the physical labour and by its status became a sufficient independent stage of public production process. In this connection it is necessary to reconsider a number of such important concepts of philosophical fundamentals of economics as labour, value and wealth. (shrink)

The Paper is dedicated to philosophical fundamentals of the Marx’s theory of product value. The author proves that in the Marx’s theory the value of the product of labour and, correspondently, of the commodity is defined inaccurately. He thinks that the concept of labour, presented in the economic theory of K. Marx, undeservedly ignores the role of intellectual activity of an individual in production of material goods. Marx considered mental activity as integral part of physical labour. (...) This Marx’s viewpoint takes in account only the controlling mental activity of an individual in the process of labour. The author thinks that such form of labour existed only in conditions of primitive manufacture, when a worker himself invented the product of labour and then created it with the help of materialactivity. In the period of industrial production of material goods, starting from the late 18th century, the intellectual labour separated from the physical labour and by its status became a sufficient independent stage of public production process. In this connection it is necessary to reconsider a number of such important concepts of philosophical fundamentals of economics as labour, value and wealth. (shrink)

Although its title promises a discussion of such matters as prostitution, surrogate motherhood, and markets in blood and organs, this book by a professor of law at Stanford University is really a treatise on market rhetoric, not markets. Its target is the intellectual application of the tools of economic analysis to spheres of human life—such as sexual relations, family life, bodily integrity, and political commitment—that are purportedly structured by moral values and ideals rather than cold calculation of advantage. The “Chicago (...) School” of economics, the law-and-economics movement, and public-choice theory are the culprits here. Writers in these intellectual movements, on Radin’s characterization, think of children as commodities with “a price and a demand function”, explain laws against vote-selling as solutions to externality problems, and count rape as “no different from any other preference satisfaction”. They “want to extend the market to everything” as a tool of thought. (shrink)

Marx's work in the first chapters of Capital is sometimes taken to be ?metaphysical?, since his remarks do not lend themselves to ?scientific? testing against quantitative data. I argue that Marx aimed to re?present the economic theory of his day in order to reveal the characteristic presuppositions of capitalist society, and ? in the first instance ? to rid the theory of logical confusions. Though his distinctions are ingenious and his arguments consistent, the enterprise fails in certain respects, (...) because he relies on Ricardian propositions about value and labour, and because his use of certain methods and distinctions of nineteenth?century logic is no longer convincing. Hence he reaches conclusions about the meaning of value, and the nature of commodities and labour, that are wrong in principle. These conclusions were the logical basis for his most sweeping predictions about capitalist society. (shrink)

This paper makes the case for conceptualizing news as a contested commodity. It offers an unprecedented application of commodification theory to the problem of the sustainability of a free press in a democracy. When the news media are expected to be purveyors of the public interest while pursuing profits for their corporate owners, the result often is a clash of capitalist and journalistic imperatives. The amoral values of the market system conflict with the moral agency of a free (...) press, and the two are inherently incompatible. This study presents a synthesis of otherwise divergent theoretical perspectives to examine the free press-free market paradox from a new vista. The author concludes regulatory reforms are needed to insulate the press from the predatory expansion of a free market system that permeates every aspect of social life, including the production of news. “American mainstream media have become the watchdog and guardian of the corporate bottom line instead of the vanguard of democracy and the public interest…. Driven by profit maximization … Instead of protecting against abuses of government power by keeping the public adequately informed, they have become complicit in destabilizing and undermining American democracy.” —Elliot D. Cohen (2005a, p. 17). (shrink)

In the transition from the feudal-corporate order to industrial capitalism, German and British producers adopted contrasting definitions of the workers' conveyance of labor as an abstract, quantifiable substance. These definitions of labor as a commodity structured techniques of manufacture and discipline in the early factory systems of Germany and Britain. The contrasting understandings of labor also shaped the dynamics of capital investment and workers' understandings of exploitation in each country before the First World War. Recast as an analysis of (...) the cultural assumptions of capitalist practice, Marx's theory of labor values offers powerful, empirically demonstrable predictions. (shrink)

Many attempts to define privacy have been made since the publication of the seminal paper by Warren and Brandeis (Warren & Brandeis, 1890). Early definitions and theories of privacy had little to do with the concept of information and, when they did, only in an informal sense. With the advent of information technology, the question of a precise and universally acceptable definition of privacy became an urgent issue as legal and business problems regarding privacy started to accrue. In this paper, (...) we propose a definition of privacy that is simple, yet strongly tied with the concepts of information and property. We show that privacy thus defined is not only useful in the context of the infosphere, but can also be successfully applied in its more traditional role as the ‘right to be let alone’. (shrink)

This article critiques conspicuous displays of morality within public discourse, recently framed as ‘moral grandstanding’, from the perspective of an intersubjective Critical Realist theory of ethics. Drawing on Honneth’s recognition theory as the basis of a ‘qualified explanatory critique’, I argue that these practices are not mere aberrations within moral discourse, but a necessary consequence of the neoliberal imperative to turn all aspects of the self into market assets. Neoliberal commodity fetishism also and especially involves the commodification (...) of moral character as a means of economic competition, as exemplified in recent discussions of ‘ethical capital’. This objectification categorically precludes intersubjectivity as the basis of ethical life, and produces a cognitive structure resembling narcissistic pathology, characterized by the pervasive objectification of self and other. Critical Realists should therefore reject moral grandstanding not only for its detrimental effects on public discourse, but because in subordinating morality to the market, it is fundamentally anti-ethical. (shrink)

This article considers how state-mandated veiling and unveiling reinforce modern capitalism. State regulations regarding veiling incorporate the female body into the political economy of the commodity form. In addition to serving as an empty signifier to be filled with exchange value for the male observer, the veil operates as an ideological apparatus of the state. In showing through fieldwork conducted in Iran how the fault lines of political agency are inscribed into the veil, I argue that subverting its (...) class='Hi'>commodity function radically relativises its meaning. Because the veil is an empty signifier lacking intrinsic content, its meaning must be determined contingently. By combining a critique of secular discrimination against veiling with a critique of state-mandated veiling, I show how European and Iranian societies incorporate the veil into the capitalist world-system and use it to suppress women’s agency. (shrink)

Should media communication be left to the market, or rather (partly) removed from the market? This question is discussed by reconstructing an often-found ‘standard argument’ in the literature on the subject. This standard argument states that some form of market-independent media provision is required since markets will fail to deliver a specific kind of high-quality content conducive to the democratic process. This paper argues that the standard argument is defective in several respects. By doing so, it reevaluates the way we (...) think about the contribution of the media towards democracy and the role that the market is to play in this respect. First, the paper argues that the standard argument's normative premise should not be couched in a welfarist theory but in terms of the capabilities that the media should strive to realise. Second, it sets the normative expectations of the media's contribution towards the public sphere and democracy at too high a level. Third, the standard argument's diagnosis of the market's failure incorrectly assumes that the market can never generate the demand for high-quality content. An alternative, more circumscribed claim about the market's failure is presented, resting on two more contingent types of demand failure. (shrink)

The theory of surplus value contrasts ‘pay for labour power’ and ‘pay for labour services’. Unlike labour services but like all commodities, labour power has a specific economic value and it exchanges at this value. Unlike that of other commodities, the consumption of labour power results in the creation of more value than the commodity itself contains. Surplus value arises from the gap between the labour needed to sustain a day’s work, to keep the worker going for a (...) day, and the labour performed in that same time. By the labour theory of value, the amount of labour needed to sustain a day’s work confers one value on the means of subsistence the worker requires, and thereby on the labour power the worker sells to her employer, whereas the day’s work itself confers another larger value on the product marketed by the employer. (shrink)

The theory of surplus value contrasts ‘pay for labour power’ and ‘pay for labour services’. Unlike labour services but like all commodities, labour power has a specific economic value and it exchanges at this value. Unlike that of other commodities, the consumption of labour power results in the creation of more value than the commodity itself contains. Surplus value arises from the gap between the labour needed to sustain a day’s work, to keep the worker going for a (...) day, and the labour performed in that same time. By the labour theory of value, the amount of labour needed to sustain a day’s work confers one value on the means of subsistence the worker requires, and thereby on the labour power the worker sells to her employer, whereas the day’s work itself confers another larger value on the product marketed by the employer. (shrink)

The defetishization thesis claims alternative markets can lead to a more honest, less mystified relationship with food production and, in turn, strengthen civil society. Drawing from Marxian political economic and environmental sociological theory, I make three general claims: capitalism is inherently ecologically and socially harmful; “ethical” commodities derived from alternative markets cannot fundamentally counteract the pervasiveness and scale of ; and, because of and, ethical consumerism does not defetishize the commodity form, but acts as a new layer of (...) commodity fetishism that masks the harms of capitalism by convincing society that the harms of capitalism can be rehabilitated with the commodity form itself. Prescriptively, I argue traditional, large-scale political tactics would be needed for “defetishization” to take place. (shrink)

A phenomenological account of the forms of life characteristic of late capitalism--including television, celebrity culture, and personal electronics--culminating in an ontology of the gadget-commodity that brings together Marxist theories of commodity fetishism and ideology with Heidegger's attempt to think truth as unconcealment.

Background Ethical reasoning and sensitivity are always important in public health, but it is especially important in the sensitive and complex area of public health emergency preparedness. Here, we explored the ethical challenges, and dilemmas encountered by frontline health workers amid the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic in Ethiopia. Methods A nationwide survey was conducted amongst the frontline health workers from nineteen public hospitals. Health workers were invited to respond to a self-administered questionnaire. Data were weighted and analyzed using descriptive statistics. (...) Results Of the 285 frontline health workers to whom questionnaires were distributed, 217 of them gave their responses (response rate 76.1%). Respondents frequently reported encountering rationing dilemmas on health commodities directly used for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Most (83.9%) of the health workers agreed that they encountered ethical challenges very frequently or frequently. Almost all [215(99.1%)] claimed that the limitation of resources was directly used for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. The frequency of difficulty in the provision of essential clinical services varied between 77% and 98.7% for different services. More than half of the study participants reported that they had encountered difficulty in the provision of clinical care on a daily or weekly basis. Regarding rationing strategies, isolating COVID-19 treatment units and limiting admission were the most frequent rationing strategies used by two-thirds of health workers on a daily or weekly basis. Conclusion Front-line health workers encountered numerous ethically challenging situations during COVID-19. More than half of health workers reported that they encountered ethical challenges in rationing the resources and delivery of different clinical services such as family planning services, maternal and childcare, immunization, and chronic care. With limited resources such as ventilators and hospital beds, healthcare providers have been faced with the difficult task of deciding who gets access to these resources and who doesn't. Overall, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented numerous ethical challenges for healthcare providers, highlighting the importance of ethical considerations in healthcare delivery. By being aware of these dilemmas and having policies in place to address them, healthcare providers can ensure that they are providing the best possible care to their patients while upholding ethical standards. (shrink)

In the present essay, I argue that portions of Frantz Fanon’s L’an V de la révolution algérienne significantly contribute to, develop, and advance the Marxian theory of commodity fetishism. First, I describe and chart Fanon’s theorization of the transformations of the veil, the radio, and medicine in revolutionary Algeria, and map the homologous moments of each of these studies. Next, I give a brief synopsis of Marx’s account of commodity fetishism and argue that this theory leaves (...) open questions about the way in which use-value plays a role in commodity fetishization in colonial contexts, and, by extension, in actual anticolonial political revolutions. The foregoing then paves the way for a re-evaluation of the central insights of Fanon’s studies of the veil, the radio, and medicine. (shrink)

Recent years have seen the flowering of a new literature on the economic nature of firms marked by a concern with their internal organization and contractual characteristics. Related literatures on the principal-agent problem and the theory of financial markets have also contributed to a better understanding of firms as economic institutions. However, the place of the concept of the ownership of the firm is poorly developed in most of this literature, with many writers either ignoring the concept entirely or (...) arguing that it is of no importance. The purpose of the present article is to point out that the concept of ownership of firms is crucial to an understanding of internal governance issues. Most economists implicitly presume that firms must be ownable and saleable if they are to be operated efficiently, and recently this viewpoint has been made more explicit by writers such as Jensen and Fama and Williamson. Their point of view is to some degree at odds with views of the firm as a coalition, which frequently appear in the same literature, and even more fundamentally in conflict with conceptions of the firm as an association or polity within which greater or lesser degrees of democracy in governance may be pursued. The first purpose of this article is to show that the incompletely articulated position of the leading authors on the economics of organization is that the firm is a commodity and must be so for purposes of efficiency. (shrink)

'Uncritical Theory' is a timely challenge to much of what passes for radical thinking in an age of postmdern commodity culture.

Creativity: Theory, History, Practice offers important new perspectives on creativity in the light of contemporary critical theory and cultural history. Innovative in approach as well as argument, the book crosses disciplinary boundaries and builds new bridges between the critical and the creative. It is organized in four parts: · Why creativity now? offers much-needed alternatives to both the Romantic stereotype of the creator as individual genius and the tendency of the modern creative industries to treat everything as a (...) commodity. · Defining creativity, creating definitions traces the changing meaning of "create" from religious ideas of divine creation from nothing to advertising notions of concept creation. It also examines the complex history and extraordinary versatility of terms such as imagination, invention, inspiration and originality. · Creation as myth, story, metaphor begins with modern re-telling of early African, American and Australian creation myths and -picking up Biblical and evolutionary accounts along the way - works round to scientific visions of the Big Bang, bubble universes and cosmic soup. · Creative practices, cultural processes is a critical anthology of materials, chosen to promote fresh thinking about everything from changing constructions of "literature" and "design" to artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. Rob Pope takes significant steps forward in the process of rethinking a vexed yet vital concept, all the while encouraging and equipping readers to continue the process in their own creative or "re-creative" ways. Creativity: Theory, History, Practice is invaluable for anyone with a live interest in exploring what creativity has been, is currently, and yet may be. (shrink)

Owing to the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on world economies, it is expected that information flows between commodities and uncertainties have been transformed. Accordingly, the resulting twisted risk among commodities and related uncertainties is presumed to rise during stressed market conditions. Therefore, investors feel pressured to find safe haven investments during the pandemic. For this reason, we model a mixture of asymmetric and non-linear bi-directional causality between global commodities and uncertainties at different frequencies through the information flow (...) class='Hi'>theory. Consequently, we utilise the complete ensemble empirical mode decomposition with adaptive noise and the Rényi effective transfer entropy techniques to establish the dynamic flow of information. The intrinsic mode functions from the CEEMDAN are carefully extracted into multi-frequencies through cluster analysis to reconstruct the series into high, medium, and low frequencies in addition to the residue. We utilise daily data from December 31st, 2019, to March 31st, 2021, to provide insights into the COVID-19 pandemic. The correlation coefficients and variances demonstrate that the high frequency which measures the short-term dynamics is the dominant frequency, suggesting short-lived market fluctuations relative to real economic growth for institutional investors. Moreover, outcomes from the multi-frequency entropy indicate a negative bi-directional causality of information flow between global commodities and uncertainties, especially in the long term. Generally, the findings present pertinent inferences for portfolio diversification, policy decisions, and risk management schemes for global commodities and markets volatilities. We, therefore, advocate that market volatilities act as effective hedges for global commodities, and they clearly act as balancing assets rather than substitutes in the long-term dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic. Investors who delayed in investing within financial markets of commodities and market volatilities are likely to minimise their portfolio risks. (shrink)

In the standard Okishio-Morishima approach, the existence of profits is proved to be equivalent to the exploitation of labor. Yet, it can also be proved that the existence of profits is equivalent to the “exploitation” of any good. Labor and commodity exploitation are just different numerical representations of the productiveness of the economy. This paper presents an alternative approach to exploitation theory which is related to the “New Interpretation” (Duménil 1980; Foley 1982). In this approach, labor exploitation captures (...) unequal social relations among producers. The equivalence between the existence of profits and labor exploitation holds, whereas it is proved that there is no relation between profits and commodity “exploitation.”. (shrink)

This article explores the ways in which data centre operators are currently reconfiguring the systems of energy and heat supply in European capitals, replacing conventional forms of heating with data-driven heat production, and becoming important energy suppliers. Taking as an empirical object the heat generated from server halls, the article traces the expanding phenomenon of ‘waste heat recycling’ and charts the ways in which data centre operators in Stockholm and Paris direct waste heat through metropolitan district heating systems and urban (...) homes, and valorise it. Drawing on new materialisms, infrastructure studies and classical theory of production and destruction of value in capitalism, the article outlines two modes in which this process happens, namely infrastructural convergence and decentralisation of the data centre. These modes arguably help data centre operators convert big data from a source of value online into a raw material that needs to flow in the network irrespective of meaning. In this conversion process, the article argues, a new commodity is in a process of formation, that of computation traffic. Altogether data-driven heat production is suggested to raise the importance of certain data processing nodes in Northern Europe, simultaneously intervening in the global politics of access, while neutralising external criticism towards big data by making urban life literally dependent on power from data streams. (shrink)

Mr Dobb examines the history of economic thought in the light of the modern controversy over capital theory and, more particularly, the appearance of Sraffa's book The Production of Commodities by Means of Commodities, which was a watershed in the critical discussions constituted a crucial turning-point in the history of economics: an estimate not unconnected with his reinterpretation of nineteenth-century economic thought as consisting of two streams or traditions commonly confused under the generic title of 'the classical tradition' against (...) which Jevons so strongly reacted. (shrink)

Carver's interpretation of Marx's value theory (Terrell Carver, ?Marx's Commodity Fetishism?, Inquiry, Vol. 18 [1975]) is accepted, but his rejection of it criticized by explicating the reasons Marx gives for his theory after his faulty analysis of exchange-value at the very beginning of Capital. The central concept of abstract labour is shown to relate commodity exchange to other forms of distribution; by being compared to these the function of commodity exchange is recognized as the attachment (...) of an amount of abstract labour to a commodity, and exchange-value as that which determines that amount What it means to say value is thought to inhere in commodities is explicated. (shrink)

Cognitive states as well as cognitive commodities play central though distinct roles in our epistemological theories. By being attentive to how a difference in their roles affects our way of referring to them, we can undoubtedly accrue our understanding of the structure and functioning of our main epistemological theories. In this paper we propose an analysis of the dichotomy between states and commodities in terms of the method of abstraction, and more specifically by means of infomorphisms between different ways to (...) classify states of information, information-bases, and evidential situations. (shrink)

Modern theory needs a history lesson. Neither Marx nor Nietzsche first gave us theory—Hegel did. To support this contention, Andrew Cole’s _The Birth of Theory_ presents a refreshingly clear and lively account of the origins and legacy of Hegel’s dialectic as theory. Cole explains how Hegel boldly broke from modern philosophy when he adopted medieval dialectical habits of thought to fashion his own dialectic. While his contemporaries rejected premodern dialectic as outdated dogma, Hegel embraced both its emphasis (...) on language as thought and its fascination with the categories of identity and difference, creating what we now recognize as theory, distinct from systematic philosophy. Not content merely to change philosophy, Hegel also used this dialectic to expose the persistent archaism of modern life itself, Cole shows, establishing a method of social analysis that has influenced everyone from Marx and the nineteenth-century Hegelians, to Nietzsche and Bakhtin, all the way to Deleuze and Jameson. By uncovering these theoretical filiations across time, _The Birth of Theory_ will not only change the way we read Hegel, but also the way we think about the histories of theory. With chapters that powerfully reanimate the overly familiar topics of ideology, commodity fetishism, and political economy, along with a groundbreaking reinterpretation of Hegel’s famous master/slave dialectic, _The Birth of Theory_ places the disciplines of philosophy, literature, and history in conversation with one another in an unprecedented way. Daring to reconcile the sworn enemies of Hegelianism and Deleuzianism, this timely book will revitalize dialectics for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

Gossen's and Becker's theory of time allocation are compared.