Overview

This book is focused on production and its relations. It argues for the primacy of economic over extra-economic processes, and of production and production relations over other aspects of the economic realm. It explores how production relations of capitalism and imperialism fetter the development of the productive forces of nature and wage-labour and hinder state’s ability to solve the problems produced by capitalism. It covers a wide range of political-economic issues including commodity production, class differentiation, fundamental traits of capitalist production (including its uneven and combined development), capitalist state, and the impoverishment of common people and their struggle against the capitalist mode of production.

Full Product Details

Author:   Raju J. Das
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Brill
Volume:   323
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 2.60cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.679kg
ISBN:  

9789004730397

ISBN 10:   9004730397
Pages:   332
Publication Date:   14 August 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements List of Figures and Tables 1 Introduction  1 The Political Context  2 The Theoretical Context  3 Overview 2 Marx and Engels’ The Communist Manifesto: Class Relations, Global Capitalism, Workers’ Conditions and Revolutionary Politics  1 Class Relations and the State across Class Societies  2 Capitalist Economic System and World Market  3 Capitalism, Culture and the State  4 Workers’ Experience of Exploitation and Its Effects  5 Workers’ Struggle within and against Capitalism  6 Conclusion 3 Marx’s Introduction to Grundrisse: Primacy of Production over Distribution, Exchange and Consumption  1 Production as a Moment of the Economic Realm  2 Distribution, Exchange and Consumption as Moments of the Economic Realm  3 Production’s Primacy over Other Moments of the Economic Realm  4 Implications of the Primacy of Production for Contemporary Debates in Political Economy  5 Conclusion 4 Marx’s Introduction to Grundrisse: the Relation of the Economic Realm to the Political and the Cultural Realms  1 Conception of the Producing Individual in Relation to Society  2 The Relation of the Economic to the Political  3 The Relation of the Economic to the Cultural  4 Conclusion 5 Marx’s 1859 Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Fettering of Productive Forces by Social Relations, and Questions of Labour and Nature  1 Marx (and Engels) on Fettering of Productive Forces by Production Relations  2 Existing Interpretations of Marx’s Concept of Fettering  3 A Partial Critique of Existing Interpretations of Marx’s Concept of Fettering  4 Towards an Integrative Perspective on Fettering for Today’s World  5 Conclusion 6 Marx’s Capital Volume 1: Relations of Property, Commodity and Value, and the State  1 Property Relations of Class Society, and the State  2 Property Relations of Capitalist Class Society, and the State  3 Capitalist Commodity and Value Relations, and the State  4 Conclusion 7 Marx’s Capital Volume 1: Capital Circuit, Capitalist Accumulation, and the State  1 The M–C (MP + LP) and the C′–M′ Phases of the Capital Circuit, and the State  2 The ‘P’ Phase of Capital Circuit, and the State  3 The Crisis-Ridden Capitalist Accumulation and the State  4 Conclusion 8 Marx’s Capital Volume 1: Labour Circuit, Class Struggle, Economic Reforms, and the State  1 The Labour Circuit (C–M–C′–R–C) and the State’s Pro-worker Interventions  2 Driving Forces behind the State’s Pro-worker Measures  3 Limits to State’s Pro-worker Interventions, and Why?  4 Conclusion 9 Lenin’s Development of Capitalism in Russia and Other Economic Writings: Commodity Production, Class Differentiation, Capitalism, and Imperialism  1 What Is Political Economy, and How to Study It?  2 Commodity Production and Class Differentiation  3 Capitalism as the Highest Form of Commodity Production, and Its Social and Spatial Forms and Effects  4 Capitalism as a Transient Progressive Social Form Production  5 Capitalist (Super-)Exploitation, Economic Inequality, and Impoverishment  6 Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism, and National Exploitation  7 Workers’ Struggle for Improvements within Capitalism, and for Socialism  8 Conclusion 10 Theoretical and Practical Implications of Marxist Political Economy  1 A General Map of Marx’s and Lenin’s Political Economy as a Field of Study  2 Political Economy of the Relation between the Economic and the Extra Economic  3 Political Economy of Class Society  4 Political Economy of Capitalist Class Society  5 Political Economy of Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Capitalism  6 Political Economy of the Progressive and Dark Sides of Capitalism/Imperialism  7 Political Economy of the Capitalist State  8 Political Economy of the Conditions of Workers and Petty Producers  9 Political Economy as a Guide to People’s Struggle against Capitalism Bibliography Index

Reviews

""Raju J Das has produced the much-needed book all Marxists hoped one of their number would someday provide, uniting in a well-argued and theoretically rigorous manner two positions that have tended to drift apart: what in political and economic terms Marxism is currently seen to involve, and what Marx and Lenin themselves said it must be. By doing so, Das confirms two things: both the resilience of Marxist scholarship, and also that he himself is in the vanguard of this process."" – Tom Brass, formerly of SPS, Cambridge University, and Editor of The Journal of Peasant Studies. ""Raju Das has produced an excellent and wide-ranging conspectus of Marxist political economy, one based on a careful and incisive reading of the “classical” works of Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin on the subject as well as a critical survey of the ideas of more recent Marxist thinkers. As Das explains so well, Marx and Lenin didn’t answer all the questions currently posed about our century’s decaying capitalist order; but they did lay an imperishable foundation for answering them."" – Murray Smith, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Brock University, Canada.

Author Information

Raju Das (Ph.D., The Ohio State University) is Professor at York University, Toronto. His research interests include Marxist political economy. His recent books include: Marxist Class Theory for a Skeptical World (Brill, 2017) and Marx’s Capital, Capitalism and Limits to the State (Routledge, 2022).

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