Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition)

Author: Liu Dongsheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-03-19
Features: This book first starts from the relationship between commodities and money, revealing the basic characteristics and operational mechanisms of the commodity economy. It proposes that with the development of production technology and changes in social production methods, the form of commodities and the labor that creates value must also change. The labor of researchers, managers, and others also creates value for commodities. Secondly, it argues that capital has the generality of reproduction and can only fulfill its reproductive requirements through movement. The market economy provides an objective environment for the movement of capital. However, in different social formations, due to the different nature of the division of surplus labor, the economic relationships they reflect are also different. In capitalist society, this is manifested as the employer-employee relationship between capital and labor. Under socialist conditions, although surplus labor also exists, it has a completely different nature under a planned economy. Finally, it proposes that the development of contemporary capitalist economies has changed the capitalist production relations, with the state playing an increasingly important role in economic life. In today's globalized economy, the government's intervention in the economic life of capitalist countries has not altered the essence of the capitalist economy.