The leading part of this volume focuses on the role of the state in capitalist society, beginning by showing the welfare state as an historical product of the class structure of English agrarian capitalism. The second chapter indicates how, in European colonies such as in Africa, taxation was an important means of forcing indigenous populations to work as wage-laborers or produce cash crops, and relating the process to Marx's 'primitive accumulation of capital'. The following two chapters move to the contemporary period, the first suggesting that change in the relationship between the nation-state and capital is rooted in the contradictory needs of labor versus capital, while the next chapter proposes analyzing capitalist institutions by relying, more than hitherto, on an hermeneutic understanding of institutions.

The following part addresses price and technical choice in capitalism. The first two chapters address price, the initial one suggesting its formation to be the same as the formation of abstract labor, while the second identifying a new category of exchange value and using it to explain how changes in demand act to redistribute value across industries. The following two chapters consider, empirically, the relation between technical choice and profit rates.

The third part addresses economic democracy within socialism, defending both direct democracy and economic calculation in terms of labor time. The concluding part develops an understanding of the class determination of knowledge, including explaining why the science and techniques developed in one class society can be used in others.

Agrarian Capitalism and Poor Relief in England, c. 1500-1790: Rethinking the Origins of the Welfare State Larry Patriquin, Nipissing University

Taxation and Primitive Accumulation: The Case of Colonial Africa Mathew Forstater, University of Missouri, Kansas City

The State-Capital Relationship and the Significance of Incorporating the Role of Labor Eshrak Zaky, University of Toronto

Political Institutions and Economic Imperatives: Bringing Agency Back in Martijn Konings, York University

Quantifying Abstract Labor: "Aliquot Part" Reasoning in Marx's Value Theory Bruce Roberts, University of Southern Maine

Exchange, Demand and the Market-Price of Production: Reconciling Traditional and Monetary Approaches to Value and Price David Kristjanson-Gural, Bucknell University

Testing Okishio's Criterion of Technical Choice Cheol-Soo Park, Pratt Institute

Testing for the Marxian-Classical Criterion of Technical Choice Gérard Duménil, Université de Paris X-Nanterre, and Dominique Lévy, CEPREMAP-ENS, Paris

Reflections on Economic Democracy Paul Cockshott, University of Glasgow, and Allin Cottrell, Wake Forest University

On the Production of Knowledge Guglielmo Carchedi, University of Amsterdam

298 Pages, 2005