2) - special issue "Marx is Back" (edited by Christian Fuchs and Vincent Mosco). I first heard Marx's phrase the 'cash nexus' when I was an undergraduate and we were studying an article by John Westergaard, published in 1970 called "The Rediscovery of the Cash Nexus". The enforcement of these rights, so that ownership is secure. Capital by Karl Marx, 9780140445688, available at Book Depository with free delivery worldwide. the aggregate effects of a multitude of people interacting in markets. Marx reacted against Hegel's philosophy in which ideas were taken to be the important determinants of history. But first I will comment on the critical history of the cash nexus'. Marx argued that the economic situation, the “substructure”, that is, the form of the productive system, is the most important determinant of all other aspects of a society, such as its social institutions and ideas, the system of law, of morality and education. As Britain’s political and cultural establishment prepare to wallow in the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare‘s death, a suitable alternative for socialists would be to consider the notable role the poet and dramatist played in the development of the ideas of Karl Marx. These often include the following ten (10) main ones: Thus, the "commodification" of a good or service often involves a considerable practical accomplishment in trade. cash nexus a concept that states the centrality of money relationships underpinning social relations especially in capitalist societies. The cash nexus I first came across Marx’s use of the phrase the ‘cash nexus’ when, as an undergraduate, I read an article by John Westergaard, published in 1970 called “The Rediscovery of the Cash Nexus”. Cash nexus è una frase e un concetto che sono stati associati agli scritti di Karl Marx e Friedrich Engels perché incapsula perfettamente il loro pensiero sulla natura alienante dei rapporti di produzione all'interno di un'economia capitalista. cash nexus The reduction (under capitalism) of all human relationships, but especially relations of production, to monetary exchange. [3] Some other priced goods are also treated as commodities, e.g. It is only because in real life people are alienated from one another through the cash nexus that is increasingly the only thing that connects them, that they must solidarize in an ideal and false unity a formally equal citizens. — The reifying effects of universalised trade in commodities, involving a process Marx calls "commodity fetishism",[22] mean that social relations become expressed as relations between things;[23] for example, price relations. The Cash Nexus I first came across Marx's use of the phrase the 'cash nexus' when, as an Human relations were downgraded to a cold, callous ‘cash nexus’, and all earlier certainties and morality dissolved into air. If, as free workers, they choose to stop working, the system begins to break down; hence, capitalist civilisation strongly emphasizes the work ethic, regardless of religious belief. Marx would argue, however, that such a conception of work is itself a by product of alienated labor. Capital: Volume One. I first came across Marx’s use of the phrase the ‘cash nexus’ when, as an undergraduate, I read an article by John Westergaard, published in 1970 called “The Rediscovery of the Cash Nexus”. Marx sums it up sarcastically in a passage at the end of chapter 6 (not included in Rühle). The (physical) transferability of the commodity itself, i.e. Under other circumstances I’m sure I would have finished it in only a week or two. Le origini della sociologia. the ability to store, package, preserve and transport it from one owner to another. As already mentioned, ‘cash nexus’ refers to the ‘single-stranded’ monetary relationship of capital to labour, while ‘subsumption’ is a term used by Marx to refer to the historical process whereby capital comes to dominate labour processes; importantly, for present purposes, a process that does not require a formal employment relationship. In fact The Cash Nexus was a book that I looked forward to reading – even while I was reading it. How quantities of use-values are allocated in a market economy depends mainly on their exchange value, and this allocation is mediated by the "cash nexus". Communism as the Kingdom of God on Earth: From Joachim to Müntzer. In Marx's analysis of the capitalist mode of production, commodity sales increase the amount of exchange-value in the possession of the owners of capital, i.e., they yield profit and thus augment their capital (capital accumulation). Due paradigmi di analisi: a) il paradigma della struttura; b) il paradigma dell'azione. These are elements within the "superstructure" of society. Marx acknowledged explicitly that not all commodities are products of human labour; all kinds of things can be traded "as if" they are commodities, so long as property rights can be attached to them. But what prices of production simultaneously hide is the social nature of the valorisation process, i.e. In opposition to this evil "cash nexus" lay the familial relation with nature and fellowmen, the relation of "love." The existence of a social need for it (a market demand) that must be met through trade, or at any event cannot be met otherwise. Part of the problem with dealing with Marxism is that Marx was in fact very reluctant to state exactly what would replace the cash nexus of brutal and egotistical “capitalism.” Marx refers to this as "simple exchange" which implies what Frederick Engels calls "simple commodity production". Thus, the workers produce by their labor both a new value equal to their own wages, plus an additional new value which is claimed by capitalists by virtue of their ownership and supply of productive capital. Likewise, in considering the gross output of capitalist production in an economy as a whole, Marx divides its value into these four components. In that case, the valuation of labour is determined by the value of its products. The existence of a reliable supply of a product, or at least a surplus or surplus product. The Cash Nexus. book, The Cash Nexus – which purports to be a general history of ‘money and power in the modern world’ – I would like to begin by saying a few words about the more circumscribed work from which it grew, namely The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild.1 That book would have been impossible to write without the cooperation, the "A Note on the Ongoing Processes of Commodification: From the Audience Commodity to the Social Factory". Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single entry from a reference work in OR for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). They reflect the fact that production has become totally integrated into the circuits of commodity trade, in which capital accumulation becomes the dominant motive. human labor-power, works of art and natural resources, even though they may not be produced specifically for the market, or be non-reproducible goods. It is a process that may be influenced not just by economic or technical factors, but also political and cultural factors, insofar as it involves property rights, claims to access to resources, and guarantees about quality or safety of use. From:  Commodity-trade, Marx argues, historically begins at the boundaries of separate economic communities based otherwise on a non-commercial form of production. The seven basic forms of commodity trade can be summarised as follows: The hyphens ("-") here refer to a transaction applying to an exchange involving goods or money; the dots in the last-mentioned circuit ("...") indicate that a value-forming process ("P") occurs in between purchase of commodities and the sales of different commodities. 5. Marx argued that dominant ideas are the result of ma… They may not even be tangible objects, but exist only ideally. Commodity fetishism tends to limit our vision of what human beings can or should do to being the 'carriers' of higher- or lower-priced commodities, and of human interactions to 'the cash nexus'. This problem was extensively debated by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Karl Rodbertus-Jagetzow, among others. The term occurs most frequently in the writings of Karl Marx and is still used primarily by Marxists. 10, No. These are "fictitious commodities" or "pseudo-commodities" or "fiduciary commodities", i.e. Hence Marx is said to be a "materialist". https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095553434 The possibility of the owner to use or consume the commodity privately. Typically, however, it is the producer himself who trades his surpluses. Karl Marx By producing new capital in the form of new commodities, Marx argues the working class continuously reproduces the capitalist relations of production; by their work, workers create a new value distributed as both labour-income and property-income. cash nexus - The slackening of all human relationships, in context of pecuniary or monetary exchange. Termine coniato da Karl Marx e Friedrich Engels per descrivere il rapporto depersonalizzato che esiste tra datori di lavoro e dipendenti in una società capitalista. M-C (an act of purchase: a sum of money purchases a commodity, or "money is changed into a commodity"), C-M (an act of sale: a commodity is sold for money), M-M' (a sum of money is lent out at interest to obtain more money, or, one currency or financial claim is traded for another; "money begets money"), C-C' (countertrade, in which a commodity trades directly for a different commodity, with money possibly being used as an accounting referent, for example, food for oil, or weapons for diamonds), Incidental expenses which cost labour-time (, This page was last edited on 27 February 2021, at 04:45. Since no one agency can control or regulate the myriad of transactions that occur (apart from blocking some trade here, and permitting it there), the whole of production falls under the sway of the law of value, and economics becomes a science aiming to understand market behaviour, i.e. Thus, while at first merchants are intermediaries between producers and consumers, later capitalist production becomes an intermediary between buyers and sellers of commodities. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. in  The right to buy and sell the commodity, and/or obtain (privately) and keep income from such trade. The labor of workers became a commodity, and Marx was excited at what he considered his discovery of the phenomenon of ‘surplus value’ ( Mehrwert , in German) that drove the entire process of exploitation and profit. The "right-wing historian" has … critical history of the ‘cash nexus’. Karl Marx, "Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy" contained in the, Karl Marx, "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy" contained in the, Karl Marx, "Outlines of the Critique of Political Capital" contained in the, "A Note on the Ongoing Processes of Commodification: From the Audience Commodity to the Social Factory", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commodity_(Marxism)&oldid=1009180971, Articles lacking reliable references from February 2021, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. In considering the unit cost of a capitalistically produced commodity (in contrast to simple commodity production), Marx claims that the value of any such commodity is reducible to four components equal to: These components reflect respectively labour costs, the cost of materials and operating expenses including depreciation, and generic profit. 2. Social sciences Commodities which contain the same amount of socially necessary labor have the same exchange value. Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend. The imposition of exclusivity of access to the commodity. triple-C: Cognition, Communication, Co-operation (Vol. When Marx describes the bourgeoisie as reducing human relations to the “cash nexus” as a prelude to the development of class consciousness, he is essentially describing the condition of the U.S.working class–probably the least willing and able to identify its source of exploitation let alone struggle against it. (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2021. The link was not copied. Even so, in simple commodity production, not all inputs and outputs of the production process are necessarily commodities or priced goods, and it is compatible with a variety of different relations of production ranging from self-employment and family labour to serfdom and slavery. People must work, because work is the source of new value, profits and capital. How quantities of use-values are allocated in a market economy depends mainly on their exchange value, and this allocation is mediated by the "cash nexus". I temi della sociologia classica: ordine e mutamento, conflitto e integrazione sociale. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. The concept of the commodity is explored at length by Marx in the following works: A useful commentary on the Marxian concept is provided in: Costas Lapavitsas, "Commodities and Gifts: Why Commodities Represent More than Market Relations". L'oggetto della sociologia e i confini con le altre scienze sociali. The most important theorist to analyze capitalism remains Karl Marx (1818–1883), the 19th-century German philosopher whose economic theories were expounded in the multivolume "Das Kapital" and in "The Communist Manifesto" (co-written with Friedrich Engels, 1820–1895). In his 2001 book, The Cash Nexus, which he wrote following a year as Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England, Ferguson argues that the popular saying, "money makes the world go 'round", is wrong; instead he presented a case for human actions in history motivated by far more than just economic concerns. Nor would they agree with what he intended to replace capitalism once it had done the work of clearing out all the feudal debris. First published: in German in 1867; Source: First english edition of 1887 (4th German edition changes included as indicated) with some modernisation of spelling; Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow, USSR; First Published: 1887; Translated: Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling, edited by Frederick Engels; Online Version: Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org) 1995, 1999; 3. A Dictionary of Sociology », Subjects: For Westergaard and other Marxist commentators, the structure of contemporary society could be This cash nexus, I wish to argue, has become the dominant concern of the social sciences that address 'consumption - the mechanics of selling determine the form of consumer society. He argues that the total new value added in production, which he calls the value product, consists of the equivalent of variable capital, plus surplus value. Retrieved 30 March 2013. The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000 Niall Ferguson 576pp, Allen Lane, £20 Buy it at a discount at BOL. So far we have dealt with reabsorption theology as a crucial forerunner of Marx's religious, eschatological communism. After all it is both shorter and has fewer citations & quotations than the … I dream of rivers of blood, of starving children, crying, afraid of the dark. [6], Price is then the monetary expression of exchange-value, but exchange value could also be expressed as a direct trading ratio between two commodities without using money, and goods could be priced using different valuations or criteria. The transferability of these private rights from one owner to another. See also capital. , and this allocation is mediated by the "cash nexus". This concept was given by Socialogists Marx and Engles. Marx thought the free market was itself wicked, and ought to be totally controlled by the state. At first, goods may not even be intentionally produced for the explicit purpose of exchanging them, but as a regular market for goods develops and a cash economy grows, this becomes more and more the case, and production increasingly becomes integrated in commodity trade. The idea is associated with MARX. Marx's analysis of the commodity is intended to help solve the problem of what establishes the economic value of goods, using the labor theory of value. 4. sommario: 1. PRINTED FROM OXFORD REFERENCE (www.oxfordreference.com). "The product becomes a commodity" and "exchange value of the commodity acquires a separate existence alongside the commodity"[16]. It has a use value because, by its intrinsic characteristics, it can satisfy some human need or want, physical or ideal. Both commodity and commodification play an important role in the critical approaches to the political economy of communication, e.g. pp. The Problem of False Consciousness. In capitalism, Marx argues, commodity values are commercially expressed as the prices of production of commodities (cost-price + average profit). [15] Thus, producers trade in those goods of which those producers, have episodic or permanent surpluses to their own requirements, and they aim to obtain different goods with an equal value in return. Academia.edu is a platform for academics to share research papers. Marx was always alert to the dissident potential of a uniquely gifted voice, writes Sean Ledwith. cash nexus  A property right or financial claim, for instance, may be traded as a commodity. their existence as commodities is only nominal or conventional. In absolute terms, exchange values can also be measured as quantities of average labour-hours. Basandosi sulla teoria di Marx, lo studioso, scrittore e attivista italiano Antonio Gramsci ha ampliato la componente ideologica della falsa coscienza sostenendo che un processo di egemonia culturale guidato da coloro che detengono potere economico, sociale e culturale nella società ha prodotto un modo di "buon senso" di pensare che incorporasse lo status quo con legittimità. [13], According to the labor theory of value, product-values in an open market are regulated by the average socially necessary labour time required to produce them, and price relativities of products are ultimately governed by the law of value.[14]. In Marx's analysis of the capitalist mode of production, commodity sales increase the amount of exchange-value in the possession of the owners of capital, i.e., they yield profit and thus augment their capital (capital accumulation). For practical purposes, prices are, however, usually preferable to labour-hours, as units of account, although in capitalist work processes the two are related to each other (see labor power). Value and price are not equivalent terms in economics, and theorising the specific relationship of value to market price has been a challenge for both liberal and Marxist economists. The term occurs most frequently in the writings of Karl Marx and is still used primarily by Marxists.