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Marxian-Class Analysis Of Income

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Marxian class analysis of income begins with the recognition that different kinds of relationships among individuals in a capitalist society which relate to the production, appropriation and distribution of surplus, produce different kinds of income. Such incomes can be classified into class and non-class components. a) Fundamental and subsumed class incomes: The capitalist fundamental class process produces income flows to both productive labourers and appropriating capitalists: v+s. The income flow to the labour, v, involves an equivalent exchange of labour power. In contrast, the income flow to the capitalist, s, involves no exchange. Other relationships which exclude the capitalist fundamental class process but do involve the distribution …show more content…

Relations between, say, bankers and their employees, employees hired by merchants, landlords, money-lenders and state functionaries fall under this category of individuals selling unproductive labour power to subsumed class. Since, these set of individuals do not come under any class process, we call such flows of value, non-class incomes and designate them as nc. Combining fundamental, subsumed and non-class incomes, Resnick and Wolff propose a general formulation of the class analysis of income distribution: Y=v+s+ssc+nc Any industrialist capitalist enterprise may be engaged in a number of class and non-class processes that can generate three forms of revenues. The enterprise receives surplus value if its board members participate in the fundamental class process and occupy fundamental class positions. If they provide conditions of existence to other industrial capitalists, they then occupy subsumed class positions and receive subsumed class revenues. Finally, if they participate in non-class processes the board member receive non-class revenues. All three must be added to obtain total revenues of the enterprise. Therefore, total revenue of any enterprise can be shown as SV+SCR+NCR where SV is its surplus value, SCR, the subsumed class revenue and, NCR, the non-class

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