Law of worldwide value - A review

Samir Amin has been an important participant in the conversation among Marxists for decades. His many books, his articles and his partisanship for the peoples of Asia, the Middle East, and
Africa are acknowledged and respected by all those who strive for a world without capitalism. He has associated his views with Marxism and enthusiastically interprets those views through the prism of the Monthly Review theoretical triad of Paul Sweezy, Paul Baran, and Harry Magdoff.
Perhaps he adheres even more faithfully to these views than the current editors
f this influential journal. He shares with Immanuel Wallerstein the World Systems approach, with its emphasis on the “core” and “periphery” distinction in the global economy. Both views have, at different times, exerted great influence among Marxist thinkers and activists, especially in the West. These views have revealed important insights into the mechanism of global capitalism and imperialism. Yet these views are inadequate for a coherent understanding of
our world today.

In his new book (The Law of Worldwide Value, Monthly Review Press, 2010), Amin offers a rich, thought-provoking update of his 1978 book The Law of Value and Historical Materialism (Monthly Review Press, 1978) designed to defend his views with respect to the developments leading us into deeper crisis in the twenty-first century.

Much has changed since 1978: the rise and total dominance of neo-liberal thinking and policy in the evolution of capitalism; the dramatic demise of the European socialist community; the rise of the Peoples’ Republic of China as a global economic power; the rise of powerful “emerging” economies in Brazil, India, Russia, and the Republic of Korea; the stagnation of the once-mighty
Japanese economy; the rise and possible fall of the European Community; and most important, a profound crisis of capitalism generated by the ascendancy of finance capital in the US. In short, the world is vastly different than the world that Amin wrote of in 1978.

To his credit, Amin offers a vigorous defense of his earlier views in light of the dramatic changes experienced over the last three decades. Unfortunately, events have swept these once persuasive perspectives off the table; capitalism has moved on.

Fundamental to Amin’s perspective is a partisan defense of Marx’s law of value. The law of value for Marx engages a theoretical construct that demonstrates the fundamental relationships inherent in capitalist commodity production. Its import is to expose the components of productive activity and explain how they interact. With that understanding, the basis for commodity exchange is bared as an expression of uniform, embodied labor. As such, the law holds up well through the long evolution of capitalism from its competitive stages, through the emergence of monopoly capitalism, and its current expression as state-monopoly-capitalism.

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