Class and Property in Marx's Economic Thought ― Exploring the Basis for Capitalism

This book presents the capitalist system as a function of the interaction of the three basic classes in the capitalist social formation. Through this, it shows how the corresponding conflicts and clashes of interests between those classes, industrial capitalists, wage labourers and landed proprietors, are unavoidable conditions for the understanding of contemporary economic structures.

Analyzing these economic structures in relation to the forms of property ownership, as well as the typical processes of production connected with them, the author points out how Karl Marx’s theory of the capitalist social formation is closely connected with the emergence and existence of a national money market. At the same time, the book has a special emphasis on Marx’s theory of ground rent and modern landed property, an aspect misinterpreted by many authors. Furthermore, through an evaluation of the most important Marxian categories regarding the analysis of the world market and its development, emphasis is placed on the concept of differences in intensity of labour between nations. This evaluation illustrates how the main categories of capital, wage labour and landed property acquire a completely different internal relation in poor countries compared to Western capitalist societies.

Class and Property in Marx's Economic Thought aims at exposing a method for analyzing contemporary capitalism through focusing on the basic relations of population groups in the capitalist social formation. It will be of interest to students and researchers within the fields of economics as well as other social sciences.

Jorgen Sandemose is Professor Emeritus at the University of Oslo, Norway and was created magister artium in philosophy at the said institution in 1973, supported by a full candidatus magisterii exam from 1971. In addition to his academic career, he has worked for fifteen years in the chemico-metallic industry and has had positions of trust in Norwegian local and nation-wide trade unions.

In 1976 he published a monograph, Ricardo, Marx og Sraffa, where Sraffian mistakes related to Marx’s theory of the numeraire and the "transformation problem" were exposed. In English, he has published essays on the relation between Sraffa and Wittgenstein and on Marx’s method in economic science.