Classical Political Economy: Primitive Accumulation and the Social Division of Labor (Bloomsbury Academic Collections: Economics)

Description

Classical Political Economy addresses the question of what determines the social division of labour, the division of society into independent firms and industries and develops the theoretical implications of primitive accumulation. It also offers a significantly different interpretation of classical political economy, demonstrating that this school of thought supported the process of primitive accumulation. Classical political economy presents an imposing facade. For more than two centuries, the accepted doctrine dictates that a market generates forces that provide the most efficient method for organising production. This laissez faire approach is an ideology that gives capital absolute freedom of action, and yet called for intervention to coerce people to do things that they would not otherwise do. Classical political economy therefore encouraged policies that would hinder people's ability to produce for their own needs. Michael Perelman, however, in this innovative take on the subject, seeks to challenge the ideologies that would allow things to continue in this line unchecked. Cover Contents Preface Introduction: Dark Designs On Reading Classical Political Economy Summary 1 Primitive Accumulation Introduction Commodity Production and the Social Division of Labor The Household as an Agent of Production A Simple Schematic of the Social Labor Process Classical Political Economy and the Labor Process Another Look at Primitive Accumulation The Squeeze Primitive Accumulation and the Game Laws Concluding Note on Political Economy and Poverty 2 A Great Beginning Sir William Petty and Richard Cantillon The Physiocrats 3 Sir James Steuart's Secret History of Primitive Accumulation Steuart's Scotland Intellectual Roots Steuart and the Organizing of Economic Development Steuart and the Dialectics of Household Production Steuart's Contribution and Legacy 4 The Classics as Cossacks: Classical Political Economy Versus the Working Class The Scotland of Steuart and Owen A Brief Digression on Land Reform David Ricardo Ricardo on Machinery Thomas Robert Malthus Robert Torrens Nassau Senior and Primitive Accumulation in Ireland 5 The Revisionist History of Professor Adam Smith Adam Smith and James Steuart Smith's Project Evidence from America Smith's Theory of Economic Development The American Reception of Smithian Economics The Conjectural History of the Social Division of Labor The Practical Rejection of Smith's Theory Smith Versus Small-Scale Producers Adam Smith's Curious Anthropologies Recapitulation Adam Smith's Discovery of the Division of Labor The Eclipse of Adam Smith 6 Benjamin Franklin and the Smithian Ideology of Slavery and Wage Labor Benjamin Franklin and Adam Smith Franklin's Theory of Accumulation Franklin and Smith Once Again 7 The Counterattack Robert Gourlay Edward Gibbon Wakefield Wakefield's Reception by Political Economy Wakefield and Primitive Accumulation John Rae and the Moral Value of Primitive Accumulation 8 Notes on Lenin and the Forging of Revolutionary Smithianism Lenin on Economic Development Epilogue References Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U W Y