Marxist Political Economy Working Group
The Marxist Political Economy Working Group aims to promote Marxist political economy, which is one of the tenets of IIPPE. Marxist political economy encompasses many diverse themes including, but not limited to, value theory, crisis theory, Marx’s method, and so on. Across these, value theory is taken as the starting point and the basis of other more complex analyses. However, this does not mean that value theory should stand on its own but it should be validated through the course of its application and development.
In relation to other IIPPE working groups which are not necessarily based on Marxian theories, the Marxist Political Economy Working Group acts as a horizontal group, informing and drawing upon the activities of other working groups by offering its own perspectives on specific topics such as privatization and neo-liberalism. We believe that value analysis provides integrity and analytical power to more complex Marxian analyses, and gives them the potential to explain systemic features of capitalism that other schools of thought have difficulty in addressing satisfactorily, especially in relation to broad historical developments in the economy and in society more generally.
This means that the Marxist Political Economy Working Group will not just focus on value theory as such but will also engage with other working groups in pursuit of the refinement and application of value theory. In addition, study of Marx’s intellectual development (e.g. the distinction between Young Marx and Mature Marx, development of the concept of world market, etc) is well-established, and will fall within the compass of the Working Group.
Whilst debate over Marx’s own political economy as theory remains imperative, the Working Group is keen to avoid continuing sterile and academic controversy at the expense of more constructive engagement across theoretical, empirical and practical issues. The Working Group will put more emphasis on the positive case for value theory, and Marxist political economy more broadly, rather than seeking to defend the theory against the mountains of criticism to which it has been subject.
Current Members
Umut Bozkurt completed her PhD in the Department of Politics at the University of York, UK. Her dissertation explored the political economy of Turkish state’s transformations in the last three decades that was characterized by military dictatorship, Turkey’s retransition to democracy and its deepening relations with the IMF and the EU. Her research interests are state theory, Open Marxism, political economy of globalization and politics of Turkey. bozumut@gmail.com
Paolo Chiocchetti is a PhD candidate in European Studies at King’s College London. His research interests focus on the European Radical Left, Marxist Political Economy and International Relations. paolochiocchetti@hotmail.com
Romain Felli is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland where he teaches the history of political ideas. His PhD is on so-called “climate refugees”. He is using a value theory framework in order to make sense of the global ecological crisis as well as of its dominant forms of regulation, focussing especially on the fetishism involved in the social forms in capitalism. romain.felli@unil.ch
Gong Hoe Gimm is a PhD candidate in Economics at SOAS, University of London. Currently his main research interest lies in developing Marx’s concept of the world market and, to deal with it properly, he touches upon several traditional themes in Marxist political economy such as the relationship between the Young Marx and the Mature Marx, the place of the Grundrisse and the ‘Six-Book Plan’ in Marx’s value theory, his method of research/presentation, and the relationship between history and logic. Eventually, he attempts to incorporate the world market category into Marx’s elaborate value theory, and to show that this incorporation will provide value theory with essential theoretical edges. His recent publications include ‘Value is as Value Does: Twixt Knowledge and the World Economy,’Capital and Class, No. 100, 2010 (co‐authored with Ben Fine and Heesang Jeon); ‘A New Horizon of Marx Study, and a Reconstruction of Critical Social Science,’ Marxism 21, 5(3), 2008 (Korean); ‘World Market’ in New Society after Capitalism, ed. by Soohaeng Kim and Jeongwan Shin, Seoul, 2007 (Korean); ‘On David Harvey’s Theory of the ‘New’ Imperialism,’ Marxism 21, 3(1), 2006 (Korean); and Academic Achievements of Korean Left Economists, Seoul, 2005 (co-authored with Soohaeng Kim; Korean).ghgimm@gmail.com
Adam Hanieh holds a PhD in Political Science from York University (Toronto) and is currently engaged in teaching and research at Zayed University in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. His current work in Middle East political economy looks at regional integration and class formation in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, employing a value-theoretic framework. He is also interested in how a value-centered approach can enrich theories of imperialism, internationalization and finance in their attempts to explain the structure of the world market. ahanieh@gmail.com
Heesang Jeon is a PhD candidate at SOAS. His current research is on the role of knowledge production and technological development in capitalism. Particularly, he is interested in incorporating the role of knowledge work into Marx’s value theory and showing that this can be done without abandoning or changing key propositions/assumptions of value theory. Based on this, he attempts to theorise the so-called ‘knowledge economy’ from a Marxian perspective, as complex and concrete forms of the abstract distinction between knowledge labour (or conception) and commodity-producing labour (or execution). This involves critically engaging with other competing theories such as KBE theories and cognitive capitalism theory. hidarang@gmail.com
Contact
To apply to join the IIPPE Marxist Political Economy Working Group, email ghgimm@gmail.com.