Abstract
This contribution seeks to reconstruct and discuss, in an exemplary way, the evolution and use of the categories ‘joint-stock company’ and ‘share capital’ in Marx’s writings. The material considered, starting with 1844, is categorised into four periods, and guided by the two main questions: does financialisation under conditions of globalisation represent a new phenomenon, or merely the unfolding of capital relations and processes as already analysed by Marx? What are the implications of the answer to this question? In answering both questions, the impact of the second MEGA edition is of particular significance. These elaborations show how joint-stock companies and share capital have been transformed with the development of the capitalist mode of production, and how their role in the economy has changed, becoming and determining the new normality in it. Connected with this development, financialisation has developed as such. The analysis passes, then, into a more precise definition and theoretical explanation of ‘capital oligarchies’, into a conclusion on the cultural challenges facing more and more emancipatory-solidary actors, and thus into an argument for renewed engagement with the reception of Capital, Volume III in the context of a renewed ‘imperialism debate’ which will be of decisive importance for the revolutionary movement.
As understood in the context of the critique of political economy
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Notes
- 1.
Just to illustrate their economic significance: from 1831 to 1840, the first five railway stock companies (or AG in German) were founded in Prussia. Its share of total stocks of all 27 stock companies amounted to 48 percent. By 1950 the 21 railway AGs accounted for 69 percent of the 67 stock companies’ total stock (Bösselmann 1939, pp. 199–200).
- 2.
Permeation of the process of social reproduction by financial market actors; socialisation driven by financial market transactions.
- 3.
This also implies a discussion of the state and politics which, at least by tendency, points beyond the Critique of Political Economy.
- 4.
Marx thereby addresses the question of the new forms of capitalist enterprise.
- 5.
Meaning share trading.
- 6.
The various concepts of monopoly capitalism, state-monopoly capitalism, organised capitalism and Empire consider the problematic of share capital discussed here to an insufficient extent.
- 7.
The author would like to thank Lutz Brangsch and Frieder Otto Wolf for their helpful comments.
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Dellheim, J. (2018). ‘Joint-Stock Company’ and ‘Share Capital’ as Economic Categories of Critical Political Economy. In: Dellheim, J., Wolf, F. (eds) The Unfinished System of Karl Marx. Luxemburg International Studies in Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70347-3_9
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