Fifth Australian Society of Heterodox Economists Conference 11-12 December, 2006 The University of New South Wales Sydney Australia ABSTRACTS The Theoretical Relevance of an Updated Marxian Theory of Commodity in Economics

The Theoretical Relevance of an Updated Marxian Theory of Commodity in Economics Pablo Emiliano Ahumada Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand. How does material production become socially recognised in Capitalist production? Capitalism breaks down the immediate unity of the material and social moments of production, characteristic of previous modes, into two interlocked yet autonomous spheres: material production and market exchange. Commodity, its basic unit, renders production global and atomistic for the first time in history, with material production taking place in social isolation; that is, privately and independently. This paper analyses why the above fundamental question is unanswerable in Classical Political Economy and Neo-Classical Economics; the former being unilaterally focussed on material production and the latter on the market. It also assesses Marx’s attempted account of the differentiated unity characterising commodity production. That is, private work becomes objective social labour as the substance of the value of commodities, and social labour finds its necessary expression in the money-form of commodities. The paper concludes by highlighting the gaps in Marx’s economic argument.