Soul and Justice in the works of Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus Essay

Soul and Justice in progress of Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus - Essay Example This paper examines that Plato (428-347 BC) characterized the soul’s parts as hunger, soul, and reason. A fair society would likewise have this structure: the beneficial (laborer) class (craving some portion of the spirit); the defensive (warrior) class (soul part of the spirit); and the overseeing (administering) class (reason some portion of the spirit). Singular equity would comprise of the hunger some portion of the spirit complying with the explanation part, with the guide of the soul part of the spirit. Any deviation from this request would bring about a low individual or society. Equity to Plato implied amicability with each satisfying his job. Plato’s perfect city was implied as a model for a person to set up the legislature of their spirit. Aristotle (384-322 BC), an understudy of Plato, presents his hypothesis of the spirit in â€Å"De Anima†. Soul is the spiritual pith or life-power of a living thing, indivisible from the body and existing as the reaso n for the body’s development and of its end. Spirits have various parts that various types of spirits may contain. Plants have spirits furnishing them with sustenance and generation. Creatures have spirits that likewise empower movement and contrasting quantities of faculties. People have this in addition to judicious soul, which has two sections: the conceivable acumen, holding all the potential musings; and the operator astuteness, bringing genuine considerations into act. The brain (specialist acumen some portion of the spirit) is insignificant and can't be ruined; in this way the psyche is undying. Equity to Aristotle was a character quality or ethicalness (Aristotle, trans. 1934, Book V). Simply individuals are the individuals who look for a considerable amount and adhere to the law. Aristotle recognized two kinds of equity: distributive equity, where assets must be disseminated similarly; and rectificatory equity, where individual exchanges must be reasonable and equiva lent. While Plato put together his thoughts of equity with respect to the perfect city and great, Aristotle saw equity all the more for all intents and purposes as being fairness in exchanges. Plato offered us one perfect vision of an ideal city and equity; conversely, Aristotle thought a few guidelines of equity were appointed naturally, however those made by men fluctuated between places. Both Aristotle and Plato saw equity as concordance in cultural associations. Epicurus (341-270 BC) takes the spirit and everything aside from the void to be made of iotas moving in a limitless universe. His â€Å"Letter to Herodotus† (Epicurus, trans. 1996) clarifies mental capacity because of development of specific neural particles. The spirit is physical; nothing is ethereal aside from void space. Epicurus instructed that the spirit closes with death of the body and no longer has awareness. To Epicurus, equity is a consent to neither damage nor be hurt, an understanding that individuals esteem helpful. Helpfulness,

Classroom Environment and Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Homeroom Environment and Education - Essay Example Rules and desires are clear and predictable set approaches that oversee the everyday understudy's practices laying out the desire and accomplishment from the learning procedure. Also, these approaches issue the understudies with steps to embrace certain assignments in the class. The ideal class condition requires the educators and related proficient need to define decides and strategies that give the understudy a job towards understanding the approaches in a positive manner, which in the long run help them to comprehend their desires in like manner. Besides, cruel standards just occupy the students’ feelings that read to the negative perspective on the learning procedure, which require the requirement for a legitimate strategy making process.Schedules are the time-arranged timetable set for the understudies for the learning of different modules. The timetable ought to be with the end goal that it permits understudies to have plentiful time to mingle, which in the long run impr oves their social abilities. Subsequently, this prompts a class domain that offers both scholarly information and encourages the social abilities of the understudies. Social abilities assume a compelling job in the taking in process from the improved interest, certainty, correspondence, and participation aptitudes of students.Routines and techniques are the set rules for understudies to follow while in class. The ideal study hall condition is met by guaranteeing that the educator defines clear and illustrative schedules and methods that the understudies are required to follow.... urthermore, unforgiving guidelines just divert the students’ feelings that read to the negative view to the learning procedure, which require the requirement for an appropriate strategy making process including the understudies concerns suitably. Calendars are the time-arranged timetable set for the understudies for the learning of different modules. The timetable ought to be to such an extent that it permits understudies to have adequate time to mingle, which in the end improves their social aptitudes. Subsequently, this prompts a class situation that offers both scholarly information and encourage the social abilities of the understudies. Social aptitudes assume a persuasive job in the taking in process from the improved interest, certainty, correspondence, and participation abilities of understudies. Schedules and systems are the set rules for understudies to follow while in class. The ideal study hall condition is met by guaranteeing that the educator plans clear and infor mative schedules and strategies that the understudies are relied upon to follow. Also, the techniques ought to summon a feeling of positive acknowledgment inside the understudies to empower the understudy feel that their feelings are sincerely thought of. The schedules for recording and presenting the assignments ought to incorporate clear directions and the dates for accommodation, which stays away from the debilitation that the understudy gets when a task is dismissed due to late accommodation. Study hall atmosphere alludes to the sentiment of the understudies, either genuinely, sincerely or both, in a homeroom. The instructor ought not bring out boosts among the understudies and ought to guarantee that all the understudies in a class feel a feeling of uplifting mentality concerning the incorporation in the learning procedure. An ideal homeroom atmosphere guarantees that it offers backing to the understudies

Is Your Relationship Headed for Marriage

Is Your Relationship Headed for Marriage Relationships Spouses & Partners Print Is Your Relationship Headed for Marriage? If only you could read his mind! By Marni Feuerman Marni Feuerman is a psychotherapist in private practice who has been helping couples with marital issues for more than 27 years. Learn about our editorial policy Marni Feuerman Updated on May 28, 2019 Cultura RM Exclusive / Twinpix / Getty Images More in Relationships Spouses & Partners Marital Problems LGBTQ Violence and Abuse So you’re in love and you believe you found “the one.”  Your relationship has been humming along quite nicely. Even your parents like him! You think enough time has gone by. Not to mention, several holidays too. Holidays with perfect opportunities for gifts. But, still no ring. It can be hard to tell if your relationship is headed for marriage. You may not want to rock the boat with such a serious conversation. But at the same time, you certainly don’t want to waste your time.   Tell-Tale Signs He Might Be the One 1. He references the future, with you included and does so often! Gone are the ifs. Its not if we do this or that, it becomes when we do this or that. Whether it is planning a vacation, purchasing a home, or attending a friend’s wedding next year, it is obvious that you are on his mind. He is no longer thinking about his singlehood but what it will be like as a permanent couple. He has communicated in both words and behaviors that you have a future together. 2. He asks your opinion on important life decisions. Things are no longer viewed as only impacting him alone. If he is offered a job in another state or he is not sure what to do about his ailing grandmother, he seeks out your input. It becomes a discussion and not a unilateral decision. 3. You are always welcome at family gatherings and he attends most of yours as well. His family accepts you and yours accept him.  It seems like a natural fit. Its a bonus if his mother always asks if you’re coming and is disappointed if you arent.   4. He is still around even though you have hit a few rough patches. Maybe you lost your job, experienced an extended illness or broke your leg.  He was right there with emotional support. He maybe even offered financial support (which, of course, you didnt take), but it made you feel secure. Or perhaps you had a nasty episode of PMS or had a big blow-up over something. If he still didnt bail, chances are hes not ever going to.   5. He demonstrates that he believes in marriage and is not fearful of making such a life-long commitment. Its a really optimistic sign if he has a positive attitude towards intimacy and commitment. He is thoughtful about marriage, wont jump in or rush, but at the same time is more than willing to take the risk on love if it feels right.   6. You have a lot in common, including a few weird or quirky things. You might have a similar sense of humor or a particular habit that you both do. It seems as if you both really get each other.   7. The dead giveaway: you overhear him asking someone about diamonds or he starts to notice or comment on other womens engagement rings!  If this happens, he is definitely thinking about proposing and chances are sooner rather than later. You do want to be patient. Seeing all or some of these signs should help you know deep down that this guy isn’t going anywhere. There’s no reason to take the romance out of the process by being pushy or always starting up conversations about your future. Alternatively, if you have been patient and you either do not see these signs or worse, he has been inconsistent in his behavior, it is time to have a sit-down talk. You will have to take a risk about expressing your feelings and check in with his. You may end up heartbroken. However, you do not want to invest any more time and energy into a relationship that is not headed for marriage if that is your goal.

The Values Of Social Work - 2271 Words

My aspiration is to pursue social work as a career has progressed over my lifetime. It is the core values of social work that inspire me to want to be a social worker. It is my desire to enable all people of all ages gain, equality and empowerment for a better life. I believe that viewing an individual in their environment and as a whole human being is what can make a difference in the lives of people. It is my desire to help others, to be the person who can help make a difference in the lives of those in need. In service, I want to give back to our communities, in particular families with children. I have the desire and have retained the passion to work and advocate for families and children. My qualities of empathy and compassion will allow me to work with families. I believe in, treating every member with dignity, while recognizing the worth of each individual. I understand that families can be complex and keeping families together is very important for healthy child development . Pursuing my Master of Social Work (MSW)’s degree is a large step on my continuing journey to deliver social work ethics with integrity. Having the Master’s in Social Work will greatly increase my competence in the field as a social worker, where I will make a difference. Having to learn how to overcome my own personal challenges has helped me build character. I have developed characteristics that will help me in the social work profession. Characteristics like empathy and compassion forShow MoreRelatedPersonal Values And Social Work Values1443 Words   |  6 Pages..................................................................................................... 3 NASW CODE OF ETHICS..................................................................................................3-4 PERSONAL VALUES VS SOCIAL WORK VALUES.......................................................4 ETHICAL REASONING.....................................................................................................5 AMBIGUITY IN RESOLVING CONFLICT..........................Read MorePersonal Values In Social Work785 Words   |  4 Pages Values were a huge part of my childhood and show a large part in my lifet today, as they support my thoughts and actions. As a social work student I have to question my personal morals, opinions and ethics as these will have a large impact on my performance as a expert. My private values are consistent to the values of social work, which is the motive as to why I have chosen a career in a social care. These values are self - determination to promote social justice, being kind and accommodating towardRead MoreValues And Ethics Of Social Work904 Words   |  4 Pages Values and ethics are important in the field of social work because they serve as guidelines for behavior and conduct. What is social work exactly? A very simple and brief response is helping those in need and providing said persons with resources they could not attain on their own. It’s always aspiring to educate one’s self on new resources, information and newly developed theories. This is more than a career; this is a decision that makes one question the direction of their moral compass. PhilosopherRead MoreValues Ethics in Social Work 1298 Words   |  6 Pagesprofessional values in the ‘British Association of Social Work’ (BASW). With this the concepts of ethics and how this operates in social work practice and analyse the general role in governing and representatives bodies in social work practice†. Values are described as set of rules and guides in the right and wrong decisions we make. Values facilitates the decisions in recognising what is worthy and valuable, with this, weighs out the important and less important, when there is a conflict of values. EthicsRead MoreVALUES IN SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE1611 Words   |  7 Pageswhat part values play in social work practice, one of the first things to understand is what our values are, Thompson (2000) states that One of the significant features of values is that we tend to become so accustomed to our own values and beliefs that we do not recognise that they are there or how they are influencing us. An important step, then, is to be clear about what our values are. Thompson (2000,pp33) I will discuss both the personal and professional values that influence social work practiceRead MoreValues In Social Work Essay1051 Words   |  5 PagesMy Helpful Values to Practice Social Work The values that are important in my life will give support in social work. My belief in God is an important value that gives inner peace and harmony. A peaceful demeanor will help my future clients to feel comfortable while working with them. Moreover, my faith shows ways to live life according to the instructions in the bible. Reading the bible shows that every person is extraordinary and irreplaceable. Therefore, it demonstrates that every person deservesRead MorePersonal Values And Social Work1049 Words   |  5 Pagesyou became interested in social work and why you chose social work as a major. – I became interested in social work when my next door neighbor kids where not well taking proper care of. When they come to my house and the look in their eyes when they had to go back home and live with being yelled at and not getting feed or cleaned on the regular. I knew then that I had wanted to help kids and not only kids but older adults. 2. Explain and discuss your personal values, as well as who and/or whatRead MoreThe Core Values Of Social Work1011 Words   |  5 PagesThroughout this course we learned the foundation of Social Work, how it began and how eventually it branched out. The importance of Social Policies, Social Justice, meeting all human needs and understanding the core ethical values of Social Work. We learned how it all began with the church, we can even go further back to the Native Americans and Pilgrim times. Where the first display of Social Work took place then and there, we were able to learn that with Edwin in his first Presentation that gaveRead MoreThe Core Value Of Social Work1025 Words   |  5 PagesThe first core value of social work is service. The purpose of service is to simply help those in need. It is our duty to find the help and support that individuals need in order to function properly, both individually and socially. Social workers have the ability to see potential in individua ls and it is our job to help individuals find that potential. It is also our duty to address social issues. In order to do provide the services needed for individuals, social workers must use their own sourceRead MoreSocial Work Values And Ethics1441 Words   |  6 PagesRunning head: Social Work Values and Ethics 1 Social Work Values and Ethics Unique to the Profession Jessica A. Rosario Arizona State University Social Work Values and Ethics 2 Abstract The history and evolution of social work dates to the late 1800’s. Since the profession was recognized many concerns arose regarding the values and ethics of social workers. The key points of the

Theme Of Myrrha And Cinyras - 1007 Words

In Sophocles, â€Å"Oedipus The King† and Ovid’s Metamorphoses: â€Å"Myrrha Cinyras†, both main characters were struck by tragedy. The characters of Oedipus (Oedipus The King) and Myrrha (Metamorphoses: â€Å"Myrrha Cinyras†) each were faced with terrible outcomes at the end of the two pieces of literature. Both Myrrha and Oedipus suffered tragic fates. However, Myrrha’s desire led to her downfall, while Oedipus had no control and was destined for a tragic life before birth. Myrrha’s character in â€Å"Myrrha and Cinyras† dealt with an emotional battle with her desire of Cinyras, her father, throughout the story, resulted in her tragic death. She was faced with an immoral dilemma of wanting her father as her lover. She goes back and forth in her†¦show more content†¦When the priest says, â€Å"You came to Thebes, you freed us from the tax we paid with our lives to that rasping Singer...we need now the great power men e verywhere know you possess. Find some way to protect us†(41-50), it exhibits how great of a leader and hero he was to the city. The deeper he searched for the man to end this plague, however, the more horrid it got. The more information he received, he began to connect the pieces from his past. Not only did he figure out the man he killed on the path was king Laios, but it was his biological father. His fear of the prophecy that the oracle told him was becoming true. play gets even more tragic as he realizes that the queen he had four children with was his mother, who kill herself before he finds the truth. Oedipus gauged his eyes outs after seeing her dead body. Oedipus was blinded from the truth his entire life. When he finally learned the truth about himself, it blinds him. Myrrha’s tragic fate was due to her desires. Her passion and lust for her father led to her death. While she did show signs of regret and was hesitant to get into the bed with her drunk father after the nurse’s manipulation worked, the lines from 564-566 prove otherwise. The lines state, â€Å"Filled with the seed of her father, she left his bedchamber having already conceived, in a crime against nature, which she repeated the following night and thereafter†(564-566), demonstrates that she did not regret herShow MoreRelated Ovids Devaluation of Sympathy in Metamorphoses Essay1777 Words   |  8 PagesMetamorphoses  Ã‚        Ã‚  Ã‚   Ovid reveals two similar tales of incest in the Metamorphoses. First, he describes the non-sisterly love Byblis acquires for her twin brother Caunus. Later, he revisits the incestuous love theme with the story of Myrrha who develops a non-filial love for her father, Cinyras. The two accounts hold many similarities and elicit varying reactions. Ovid constantly tugs at our emotions and draws forth alternating feelings of pity and disgust for the matters at hand. Repetition with a

The Great Influenza Essay Free Essays

The Great Influenza is an account of the 1918 flu epidemic written by John M. Barry. Barry writes about scientists and their research of the great epidemic that killed thousands of people. We will write a custom essay sample on The Great Influenza Essay or any similar topic only for you Order Now John M. Barry uses many rhetorical strategies in his story to characterize scientific research. He also uses descriptive words to help the reader envision the story. Barry uses repetition to convey his point across to the reader about scientific research. Barry talks about the certainty and uncertainty in the field of science throughout his accounts, â€Å"Certainty creates strength. Certainty gives one something upon which to lean†. By using repetition, Barry is able to instill the ideas he has about the field of science to the reader over and over again. Not only does he talk about the certainties in life, but the uncertainties as well, â€Å"Uncertainty creates weakness. Uncertainty makes one tentative if not fearful, and tentative steps, even when in the right direction, may not overcome significant obstacles†. By using the strategy of repetition, the reader gets a real sense of how the author feels about certain subjects. Barry’s use of descriptive words allows the audience to further understand his purpose of the challenges of experiments and the qualities that come from it. In describing the decisions that scientists must make, Barry describes work as â€Å"grunt† and â€Å"tedious. Through these words the reader realizes that a scientist does experience a complicated workload. He also uses words such as â€Å"strength† and â€Å"courage† in order to describe the characteristics that are needed to overcome the uncertainty that is so common in science. While describing a scientist’s journey into the â€Å"unknown,† Barry uses words such as â€Å"wilderness† and â€Å"frontier† which fu rther illustrate the uncertainties mentioned. Barry also describes a researcher as someone who paves ways for everyone else. Research is so much more, it leaves roads for so many other things; that’s why is has to be so precise and accurate. â€Å"A single step can also take one off a cliff. † Barry says this in the passage to show the preciseness of science. One mistake can lead to so many problems for everything else, but it can also lead to something new. John M. Barry uses many rhetorical strategies to portray his views of scientific research. He explains the certainty and uncertainty of a scientist to overcome the hardship of their work. How to cite The Great Influenza Essay, Essay examples

Marketing Strategy Development Woolworths

Question: Discuss about the Marketing Strategy Development Woolworths. Answer: Introduction: Marketing can be learnt in a day but it takes a whole lifetime to master it. Be it a multinational giant or a modest start up, an effective marketing strategy is a crucial road guide for the business enterprise as a whole. An organization can promote its policy and objectives by establishing a coherent and well-knit marketing strategy ((NewsComAu, 2017). They can also court the appropriate customers and allocate resources accurately, safeguarding the companys reputation. Bu first it is very important to have a deep insight into the very core of marketing strategy that is the conception as to what marketing strategy is all about. It is the fundamental target of a firm to raise its productivity and acquire sustainable competitive benefit. It incorporates both basic short term and long term plan of actions dealing with the analysis of a initial situation, formulation, evaluation and selection of market-oriented blue print of a company thereby contributing to the goals of the firm and pu rsuing its marketing objectives. The heart of ones business success is predominantly dependent on its marketing schemes. No matter what the magnitude of the company is, it goes without saying that every enterprise requires a marketing plan comprising of a comprehensive marketing strategy and well-built calendar to stay on track throughout the year and not to undergo any kind of deviation. Moreover, it also helps to achieve a lead in sales. A company devoid of a potent marketing scheme is missing out imperative opportunities. In this context of marketing in the current scenario, it is to be understood that a well-designed and extensive market planning is leading to the expeditious development and expansion of the food retail industry. Such industries stringently adhere to the strictures of fundamental criteria of a sleek marketing plan. Among such retailers and retailing industries, a name, which is sure to gain the limelight, is Australias renowned grocery or supermarket chain, Woolworths Supermarkets exclusively owned by Woolworths limited. Woolworths hinges upon a tactful marketing propaganda and is evidence in itself as to where a constructive and precise marketing scheme can lead an industry. Starting its venture in 1924, initially under the banner of Woolworths Bazaar Ltd, Woolworths has now acquired a worldwide reputation through its prodigious profit margins and a plausible retailing strategy (Ausfoodnews.com.au, 2017) Woolworths has affixed their dominance in the market accounting for about 80% of the total market share, forming a duopoly of supermarkets along with Coles. Hence, this report pen-pictures a brief overview of Woolworths and its operational strategies from a marketing perspective and indulges in briefing its orientation towards the marketing undertakings and the analysis of the marketing mix model both in terms of the 5Cs and 4-7Ps considering the bellwether retailing supermarket Woolworths and its benefactor products (Arli et al. 2013). The meticulous execution of surveys and brand launches and market positioning initiated by Woolworths is an adept marketing instrument, which also requires worth a mention through the following report. Last but not the least it also estimates the contribution of its diverse products in building up the brand reputation for Woolworths in the retail market and recommends certain elements, which can be implemented to rectify the shortcomings along with elaborate justifications of the same. Overview of Woolworths Cherishing a duopoly position in the Australian retail market, Woolworth has reached a pinnacle of success and added an extra feather to its cap by enlisting itself among the top 10 companies of Australia according to the survey conducted by Forbes. Woolworths offer a heterogeneous section of products specializing not only in groceries, which includes vegetables, meat and packaged foods but also in selling magazines, DVDs and stationery products. This subsidiary currently pursues its operation in 980 stores across Australia and quite a few in the global context along with 16 convenience retail stores displaying the same logo but without the name Woolworth (Knox 2014). Headquartered in New South Wales, Australia, some of the stores of Woolworths operate in Victoria under the banner head of Safeway which includes four stores in the rural Victoria zone and three stores in the suburbs of Melbourne. Retaining its supremacy over the business sector for more than 92 years, this eminent reta iling chain continues to swoop higher with an average sale of $33,275 million, a profit range of $ 1,099 million, an asset value of $11,936 million and a mammoth share of market value amounting to $35,489 million (King and Thoebia 2014). Initially trading under the name of Wallworths Bazaar, Woolworths group renamed itself as Woolworths Limited on 22nd September, 1924 taking into account the fact that the initial name was not registered in Australia and Woolworths then had no intention of expanding its business overseas. At the primary stage the shareholders were not keen on investing on the brand for heightening its image but fortune had something else in store for them. As a result, just after the third year of their operation, the share of dividends paid by the company accelerated at a galloping rate from 5% to 50% with efficacious trading practices enticing the shareholders to invest further. Today it has a worldwide acclaim and a global market to deal with and the credit for this solely goes to their sterling marketing approach. Marketing Orientation of Woolworths: Marketing Orientation can be defined as a business model chiefly focusing on the delivery of products devised according to the consumer preferences and requirements adding with it the essence of product functionality and and production orientation or efficiency. The generation of market intelligence organization-wide pertaining to the demands of the consumers at current or future scenario, disseminating intelligence over all the departments and extracting responsiveness from the organizations is a specific quality of marketing orientation. Though initially it concentrated on sale maximization and production cost minimization, with the passage of time and evolution of the marketing outline, they shifted their approach to customer satisfaction (Tennant 2014). They perceived the sales orientation model as an ill-equipped one and began to develop products based on customers insights and opinions. With the brisk advent of Internet technology and e-commerce facilities, the consumers have b ecome the major driving force as far as contemporary marketing orientation is concerned. Now coming to the context of Woolworths, it is distinctly observed that Coles being the primary competitor of the Woolies, jointly dominates almost 80% of the market. Recent marketing tactics helped Woolworths to incur higher percentage of profit in the first half of 2015 with a record sale of 1.8 billion. This enabled it to gain the acclaim of Australias fastest developing liquor and food retailer cleaving itself at the top of the industrial sector. One of the most remarkable moves adopted by Woolworths in the first half of 2013 was the introduction of Aussie Animal Trading Cards, which was a massive point of attraction for the children market. Advertisements displaying discounts on grocery and petrol and products of premium labels and promoted by celebrities also had a positive contribution on its sales. The platform which they choose for their new ventures are more or less targeted. They not only focused on profit maximization but also incorporated welfare interest of the consumer s in their modified approach (Reed and Ireland 2015). They offered a diverse range of commodities assuring cheapest prices and even money back guarantees. Woolworths became the pioneer store in the world to initiate receipt through cash register machines at the leading edge of Australias innovation. Woolworths transition to become explicitly a grocery store saw the emergence of the first Big W store in 1955. In addition to that, its policy of taking over Safeway Australia proved extremely beneficial for their progress as it affixed its name to the Queensland and Victorian stores. Further rebranding in 2008 as Woolworths Supermarkets, lend it a stylized market identity (Flax, Bick and Abratt 2016). In 1987, Woolworths launched the Fresh Food People Campaign which was a USP for the overall brand. Later they replaced their slogan to Australias Fresh Food People for better market segmentation and target positioning. But due to some commercial issues they reintroduced their original slog an of Fresh Food People in 2014 backing up with a brand new commercial lineup. 5 Cs of Woolworths: Company: Woolworths, popularly known as woolies in Australia is a supermarket retailer who has been a preeminent player in the business industry. It has attained a startling level of growth and development in the Australian retail market and across the globe. Numerous factors have played a pivotal role in its surpassing growth, which includes a key marketing campaign, and hence the following strategic analysis report tends to conduct a critical analysis of such plan of actions for Woolworths in an optimistic manner (Ferry, Parton and Cox 2013). The below mentioned evaluation concentrates on estimating the current business blueprint of Woolworths which gives scope for additional recommendations with regard to seeking improvement in its upcoming strategies. SWOT Analysis for Woolworths: SWOT ANALYSIS STRENGTHS Market leader in the Aussie retail business chain. Optimum exploitation of market potential with the help of technological and human resources and an impressive presence across the sector. Woolworths attained zero food waste by 2015 by finding cost efficient packaging techniques. WEAKNESSES The setback in the business of Woolworths is the negative impact of external environmental conditions. The government restriction on price hike has also affected the growth curve of the company after the fall of Cole. OPPORTUNITIES The Aussie retail industries are showing great potential as whole by the virtue of computerization and customers inclinations towards retail chains. Woolworths is progressing towards a phenomenal success by adapting multi-option retailing strategy to cater to ever-changing customer demands THREATS The biggest threat to Woolworths is the growing competition in the market Another setback is provided by the government intervention that is severely affecting the growth of Woolworths especially within Australian retail. Fig: SWOT analysis of Woolworths (Woolworths Online 2017) Customers: The customer base of the Aussie retail giant Woolworth is widespread showing the companys impressive grasp at the market. The company sells products catering to every age group ranging from grocery to stationary to magazines and DVDs (Das Nair and Dube 2015). The variety and quality provided by the company has captivated the consumers and attractive schemes and deals thee company releases further enhances consumer loyalty. Collaborators: The overwhelming success of the retail chains are the direct outcome of the perfectly timed diversifications and collaborations. Aussie retail giant Woolworth has a long list of collaborators as well. The company has set a new bar in customer satisfaction by their websites and efficient online selling services (Mialain et al. 2015). Competitors: The chief competitors of Woolworths would be the other retail giant dominating the Australian market, Coles. Coles is the supermarket chain that has been conquered by the Wesfarmers in the last decade and ever since their grasp on the market has escalated and that has posed a significant threat to the Woolies (Greenland 2013). Both the supermarkets sell very similar range of products and the quality standards are not very different either. Apart from that, supermarkets like Walmart, Target, TESCO contribute to the growing competition in the retail market. Challenges to Overcome: Woolworth has been in the retail marketing for a number of decades and undoubtedly has constructed a stable position for itself in the market. However the growing competition has left the company looking for ways to retains its market popularity (Cant, Wiid and Sephapo 2016). Despite the fact that the company has accomplished being enlisted in the top 10 list of Australian retail companies, it still has a few challenges to overcome: Due to the growing competition and the online shopping boom the retail chains are rapidly losing their customer base. The company needs to focus on regaining the momentum in Aussie food market by focusing on the initiatives that can improve the customer satisfaction and loyalty (Phillipiaov 2014). The company launches a range of novel brands every year, and the company needs to focus on a stronger promotion campaigning for the new ranges. According to the directorial board the customers have always responded well to their new ranges and Woolworths is focusing on the long term growth in fragmented markets (Mortimer and Ingersoll 2015). The best method to reacquire the domination in the retail marketing and defeat the customer inclinations towards online shopping is attracting the customers by discounts. The online selling websites provide impressive discounts to the customers and the supermarkets chains should focus on frequent discount deals to recapture the market (Bailey and Bailey 2016). Woolworth needs to accelerate its lean retail market in order to compete with the new environments, the supermarket has always had an efficient low cost foundations to cater to all customer segments. The company can positively implement a multi- channel approach to facilitate central cost out programs (Ariyawardana and Collins 2013). The major setback in the super market business is the government interventions n price hike. There are many instances where a supermarket chain had to brave a huge loss due to government ban on price hikes that inevitably lowered the consumer loyalty and satisfaction. The best way to avoid such restrictions is to incorporate efficient monitoring that restricts frequent price hikes and further improving their cost effective packaging program by their Zero waste policy (Trevena et al. 2014) Woolworth have always been famous in providing quality with variety, incorporating global brands with local brands and phantom brands. However selling phantom brands can eventually cause bigger problems for their overall marketing. Studies suggest that phantom brands and local products sold under the thumb of the Woolworth name causes irritation and confusion in the customers (Trevena et al. 2014). Hence the company has to construct better marketing and promotion strategies for the phantom brands. Lastly, online marketing is the ultimate modern age tool to captivate the consumers of all age. The company should strengthen their social media marketing along with electronic media marketing to ensure a better grasp at the consumer market. Conclusion: A strategic analysis of Woolworths was carried out for viewing the access of the strategies that have been adopted. Woolworths always focuses on attainment of the high level of growth on the basis of its performance. The strong commitment towards its employees and its customers is the main support for its growth. The factors like influence by the government, the changing pattern of the society and the upcoming trend by the customers and the unfavorable economic conditions including the competitive business environmental situations affects the strategies and the development of the company in a negative manner. These factors are the analysis of the environment that is suffered by Woolworths. However, these analyses are the indication of the growth factor internally that have a proper potentials of the development of the company. Recommendation: Based the overall strategies, the listed recommendations are considered essential: Woolworths must focus on framing its strategies in a consistent manner with the political situations as well as the condition established across the country. It must aim on innovating the particular strategies to improve their performance The social trends of the consumers that show the high dynamism that can be considered as one of the important strategy for the growth of the company. The recommendation also focuses on the further improvement of the support of the high skilled employees by additional development mechanism and the training programs for the customers. References Ariyawardana, A. and Collins, R., 2013. Balancing industry needs against global competitiveness: a challenge for the Australian vegetable industry.Outlook on AGRICULTURE,42(3), pp.155-161. Arli, V., Dylke, S., Burgess, R., Campus, R. and Soldo, E., 2013. Woolworths Australia and Walmart US: Best practices in supply chain collaboration. Journal of Economics, Business Accountancy Ventura, 16(1). Ausfoodnews.com.au. (2017). Woolworths announces new strategies to win over grocery shoppers, AFN reveals full detail | Australian Food News. [online] Available at: https://www.ausfoodnews.com.au/2015/05/06/woolworths-announces-new-strategies-to-win-over-grocery-shoppers-afn-reveals-full-detail.html [Accessed 1 Feb. 2017]. Bailey, M. and Bailey, M., 2016. Marketing to the Big Middle: establishing Australian discount department stores.Journal of Historical Research in Marketing,8(3), pp.416-433. Bolton, S., 2015. Woolworths workers back at work. Green Left Weekly, (1065), p.3. Cant, M.C., Wiid, J. and Sephapo, C.M., 2016. Key Factors Influencing Pricing Strategies For Small Business Enterprises (SMEs): Are They Important?.Journal of Applied Business Research (JABR),32(6), pp.1737-1750. Das Nair, R. and Dube, S.C., 2015. Competition, Barriers to Entry and Inclusive Growth: Case Study on Fruit and Veg City. Ferry, J., Parton, K.A. and Cox, R.J., 2013. Linking supply chain practices to competitive advantage. British Food Journal, 115(7), p.1003. Flax, J., Bick, G. and Abratt, R., 2016. The perceptions of supplier-buyer relations and its affect on the corporate brand. Journal of Brand Management, 23(1), pp.22-37. Greenland, S.J., 2013. Cigarette brand variant portfolio strategy and the use of colour in a darkening market.Tobacco control, pp.tobaccocontrol-2013. King, L. and Thobela, S., 2014. Woolworths farming for the future. International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, 17(B). Knox, M., 2014. Supermarket monsters: Coles, woolworths and the price we pay for their domination. The Monthly. Mialon, M., Swinburn, B., Allender, S. and Sacks, G., 2016. Systematic examination of publicly-available information reveals the diverse and extensive corporate political activity of the food industry in Australia.BMC public health,16(1), p.283. Mortimer, D. and Ingersoll, L., 2015. The impact of deregulation on employment relations in the Australian retail industry.Employment Relations Record,15(2), p.43. NewsComAu. (2017). Theyre own brand. But not as we know it.. [online] Available at: https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/woolworths-introduces-new-range-of-phantom-brand-private-label-products/news-story/86d3039995f6a558e63c4d5840843837 [Accessed 1 Feb. 2017]. Phillipov, M., 2016. Helping Australia Grow: supermarkets, television cooking shows, and the strategic manufacture of consumer trust.Agriculture and Human Values,33(3), pp.587-596. Reed, M. and Ireland, R., 2015. The retail challenge. MHD Supply Chain Solutions, 45(2), p.58. Tennent, K.D., 2014. When the shopping was good: Woolworths and the Irish main street. Trevena, H., Dunford, E., Neal, B. and Webster, J., 2014. The Australian Food and Health Dialoguethe implications of the sodium recommendation for pasta sauces.Public health nutrition,17(07), pp.1647-1653. Trevena, H., Neal, B., Dunford, E. and Wu, J.H., 2014. An evaluation of the effects of the Australian Food and Health Dialogue targets on the sodium content of bread, breakfast cereals and processed meats.Nutrients,6(9), pp.3802-3817. Woolworths Online. (2017). Woolworths Supermarket - Buy Groceries Online. [online] Available at: https://www.woolworths.com.au/ [Accessed 2 Feb. 2017].

American Dream Article SOAPSTone free essay sample

Remember when you were a child and somebody asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up? Personally, I wanted to be a NASCAR racer. I know, a little far-fetched if you think about it. When we were children we were so optimistic. We hardly accepted failure. This was the time in our lives when we sincerely believed in ourselves. We believed in the American Dream because it was instilled in our minds by our parents that we could be anything we wanted to be. We dreamed without limits. The American Dream can be generally defined as living a prosperous and fulfilled life. As Americans when we consider the American Dream we think of being rich, but if you ask a foreigner what their idea of the American Dream is, you will most likely get an answer that has the words, â€Å"freedom, equality and opportunity.† The American people have changed the definition of the dream over time, defining it as a word that signifies the hope of becoming rich and prosperous. We will write a custom essay sample on American Dream Article SOAPSTone or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Today we have moved away from the belief that anyone can achieve the American Dream. Bob Herbert, an op-ed journalist for The New York Times, wrote in his article, Hiding from Reality â€Å"However you want to define the American Dream, there is not much of it that’s left anymore.† First year student Nia MooreWeathers said, â€Å"the American Dream was more achievable when the economy was growing in the 20th century, but the American dream has changed its definition therefore it is different. It may not be the same for everyone.† The idea of the American Dream has definitely changed over time. Today’s version of the â€Å"American Dream† was created during the time around the Great Depression of the 1930s. This was the time when people believed they could succeed from rags to riches. Nowadays, that idea has faded. First-year student Dora Castillo said, â€Å"I feel like the American Dream for the most part is everyone wanting the same thing. They want to flourish and succeed in this country, but the only difference is that everybody wants to succeed in different things. I feel like nowadays especially in our economy it is hard to achieve anything. It’s even hard to achieve an education. Everything is about money.† It is clear that people believe that the universal ideal of the American Dream is rather difficult to achieve since our economy is at a downfall; this is why people have become pessimistic about the American Dream. Personally I think achieving the rags to riches American Dream is a one in a million, luck-based accomplishment that is nearly impossible. I believe the more resources and connections you have your chances of achieving your goals are higher, but that concept is based off of pure luck. The sad reality of the matter is that many people give up easily or accept the reality of the situation they are in. Everyone has said, â€Å"Dream as if you’ll live forever† but if you were to look at the lifestyles and goals people have, no one lives by that phrase. As college students, we all have similar goals. We want to get through school in order to someday have a secure career. A majority of us do not dream of becoming the next Bill Gates because we are realistic. People are aware of the hardships our country is facing; therefore we dream of what we know is an appropriate approach to the American Dream. It is sad that the Dream is not as optimistic as it was in history, but time changes everything.

The French Revolution essays

The French Revolution essays The French Revolution was a turning point in France's history. The Revolution began when King Louis XVI called the Estates General to provide money for his bankrupt government. Between 1789 and 1799 many kings, queens, nobles, and clergyman lost their power and status in France. France's government changes drastically over the ten years the war was fought and it will never be the same. By the end of 1788, France was on the verge of bankruptcy. King Louis was a very indecisive and shy king. He didn't care much for politics or people. Through his carelessness Louis chose officials who stole money from him and France. Since France had no money and a large debt to pay the king taxed the citizens harshly. The angry French grew tired of the heavy taxes and riots broke out constantly against the king. Louie summoned the General Estates to meet at the Palace of Versailles for the first time since 1614. Louis had all three estates prepare cahiers. The cahiers were notebooks listing the grievances of each estate. Many cahiers asked for reform. These reforms includes: freedom of speech, a regular meeting of the Estates General, and fairer taxes. The third estate and least influential was also the largest. It contained one million middle class citizens and twenty-four million laborers and working class citizens. The third estate sick of being refused by nobles and being out-voted(not in count but rank) formed the National Assembly. When their normal meeting place was locked for preparations of a royal speech the National Assembly took it as a threat. Between the ten days of June 17,1789 and June 27, 1789, the delegates of the assembly took the Tennis Court Oath. The oath meant that they would not dismember until a fair constitution was written up for France. After many nobles joined the National Assembly the king had not choice but to accept them, but ...

Government, Market Forces and Renewable Energy Systems (RES) Essay

Government, Market Forces and Renewable Energy Systems (RES) - Essay Example To tackle this issue globally there have been recent researches in the line of climate change mitigation, use of renewable resources, and energy economics. Climate mitigation  relates to activities associated with the alleviation of the potentially harmful aftereffects of global warming by â€Å"implementing policies to reduce GHG emissions and enhance sinks† (Verbruggen, A., IPCC Glossary Working Group III, annex I, 818). The UN delineates climate mitigation as a form of â€Å"human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases† (United Nations, Glossary of climate change acronyms, 2011).  Examples for mitigation include using renewable energy resources like wind or solar power, judicious use of fossil fuels in industries or for production of electric power, bettering building  insulation, afforestation  and increasing the number of other sinks that would displace larger amounts of  atmospheric carbon dioxide  from the atmosphe re (ibid). ... However, an April 2011 report shows that the atmospheric volume level of CO2 by itself is 393 ppm, while increasing at an average annual rate of 1-3 ppm (Direct Air Capture of CO2 with Chemicals, 2011, 4). Therefore, to avoid violating the target set at 2  °C target, the levels of CO2 in atmosphere must necessarily be stabilised as soon as possible, though it is unlikely that the set target would be achieved soon (Adam, World will not meet 2oC warming target, climate change experts agree, 2009). However, a majority of the nations consider mitigation strategies for greenhouse gas emissions as expensive, and there is a widespread debate regarding mitigation costs and the nature of costs-distribution of climate change mitigation, amongst the developed, the developing, and the underdeveloped nations. Ensuring climate change and energy supply security are the core concerns for a majority of the world’s policymakers aiming to frame a worldwide energy system that is sustainable in nature. 1 Climate Change To meet the EU target of keeping global temperature rise below 2oC, the volume of atmospheric CO2 equivalents must be kept within volume limits of 445 - 490 ppm, as expressed in the 2007 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC, 2007). In 2005, greenhouse gas emission concentration had already reached CO2 equivalents of 450 ppm, owing to which IPCC had appraised in the report that greenhouse gas discharge must reach its highest level latest by 2015 (ibid). The report also suggested that greenhouse gas emissions must be decreased by 50–85% by 2050 (relative to the figures recorded in 2000), and the reductions made must be nearer to 85% to avoid

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS FINANCE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS FINANCE - Essay Example A well reputed business will attract a vast pool of franchisees in the foreign land as brand recognition is one of the key advantages that every franchisee is keen to get from a franchise contract. Through franchising an organization can avoid many of the start up problems that it can face in a new country. By having a local person as a franchisee in order to sell its products the organization will be able to gain trust of the people of the new country and it will not feel alienated in a foreign land. Moreover the franchisee may guide the organization to gain recognition in its new market by applying specifically those marketing techniques that correspond to the taste of the general public. Additionally the organization will have a promising return in shape of royalty fees. But franchising also entails some drawbacks as an overseas expansion strategy. Firstly, the organization will face cultural barriers especially the language barrier (if the language of the home country and foreign country are different) while finding a suitable franchisee and then initiating its operations in a new territory. Secondly, the organization personals have to visit the foreign country, and most probably stay there for some time, in order to acquaint themselves with the ground realities and assist the initiation of operations. Thirdly, heavy capital investment will be needed in order to install machineries in new place. Lastly, the organization has to constantly inspect the franchisee operations in order to ensure quality consistency which is the essential characteristic of any franchise. 2. Licensing: licensing can be comparatively a safe mode of expanding overseas in which an organization (the licensor) permits the company (the licensee) in a target market to use its property which is usually intangible e.g. patents, trademarks and production techniques (Quick MBA n.d.). Licensing reduces risk as the licensor produces and markets the product while licensor receives the license fe e. Moreover licensor can get a higher ROI because of its minimum investment. Furthermore licensing is an effective tool to avoid the trade barriers and helps the organization to develop its brand name by familiarizing itself in the foreign country through licensing. But licensing is not without its drawbacks. The licensor does not get mega brand recognition in the new territory because it is not producing the producing but merely extending its name/label to the product. Even more there is a potential danger of knowledge spillovers and licensee may become a competitor in future once the license time period is over. 3. Joint Venture: joint ventures can be defined as "an enterprise in which two or more investors share ownership and control over property rights and operation" (Market Entry Strategies n.d.).While joint venture facilitates the sharing of technology and work load it also ensures financial strength. Joint venture entails medium level of control as both the organizations in it work at the same level and there is no one boss who can dictate the working of joint venture rather it is more about mutual cooperation. It is a very suitable way of entering in a foreign market when the organization wants to create a synergy by combining two teams that have distinct skills and when combined together can produce outstanding results. Joint venture can prove to be an inappropriate way of entering in a new market when the partners in a joint venture can be potential competitors and have same line of products. In these cases join venture

Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Hamlet and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Introduction Hamlet It is important to note that Hamlet itself is a transformation, of form as well as ideas, which is based upon other transformations. Indeed the metatheme of Hamlet is transformation (whereas Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is about the inability to effect transformation or change). Tom McAlindon, in an article entitled What is a Shakespearean Tragedy, draws our attention to the fact that Hamlet, like Shakespeares other tragedies, has an intense focus on the phenomenon of change: change is not just one of worldly fortunes; it is above all else interpersonal, moral, and psychological change. An essential part of the heros experience is the horrified discovery that the world he knows and values, the people he loves and trusts, are changing or have changed utterly. He feels cheated and betrayed to the very heart of loss. (p.6) Shakespeare was writing in the tradition of Revenge Tragedy, sometimes referred to as Theatre of the Blood. Elizabethan and Jacobean versions of revenge tragedy borrowed heavily from the tragedies of Seneca (4 BC-65 AD), a Roman dramatist whose tragedies were published in 1581. Seneca, in turn, based his tragedies on Greek mythology and he appeared to have been influenced by Aristotle (384-322 BC). Students should acquaint themselves with the features of these tragedies. Shakespeare borrowed, and indeed transformed his tragedies from the classical form in a number of ways, such as the inclusion of comic elements (comic relief, satire, mocking, parody etc), the common man character and showing on stage acts of violent passion. Shakespeare also appears to have borrowed quite extensively from a contemporary of his, Thomas Kyd (1558-1594) whose revenge tragedy The Spanish Tragedy was not only enormously popular but very influential to all in the Elizabethan and Jacobean drama industry. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Stoppard has written three, what some would refer to as irreverent, transformations of Shakespeares tragedies: Doggs Hamlet, Cahoots Macbeth and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. This enterprise is quite audacious as he is not just transforming plays but modern classics. When asked why he chose Hamlet he responded: [Hamlet] is the most famous play in any language, it is part of a sort of common mythology. Stoppard also writes in a tradition; in his case the tradition of the Theatre of the Absurd. The literary term Theatre of the Absurd was coined by the critic Martin Esslin and refers to tendencies in drama to portray life as meaningless and absurd which emerged in Paris in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Absurdist Theatre itself can be seen as a transformation of Dadaism and Surrealism, two early twentieth century aesthetic philosophies which focused on a sense of bewilderment at the violence, depravity, and hopelessness they believed endemic to the human condition in the twentieth century. By challenging conventional theatre and traditional views The Theatre of the Absurd attempted to shock the audience into questioning its own values and assumptions. The drama portrayed was not meant to be regarded in the same terms as realist drama but rather as a drama of ideas. Dramatic features often included meaningless exchanges due to a distrust of language as a means of communication, a por trayal of life as meaningless through a lack of dramatic suspense, abstracted and minimalist settings, comic treatment of traditional themes and a blurring of reality and fiction. There is often a sense of playfulness at times drawing attention to their own artifice. There is also a close link with existentialism. Existentialism is a philosophical movement that explores the question of existence and how it is defined, particularly in a world in which meaning appears to have disappeared. The terrible events of the two World Wars accelerated the waning of religious faith which had started with the Enlightenment. There was a general mood of disillusionment with so called civilized values. The absurd plays of dramatists such as Ionesco, Genet, Beckett and Pinter all depict humanity as bewildered and anxious in the face of a loss of meaning. Stoppard uses Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead as a vehicle to express these ideas and draws upon what is probably Shakespeares most existential work, Hamlet. Hamlets famous To be or not to be speech is the intertextual echo that resounds throughout Stoppards play. Stoppard has also appropriated Becketts influential absurdist play Waiting for Godot. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern mirror the predicament of Vladimir and Estragon, two lost souls waiting for something to happen. They are stranded between modernity and postmodernity. They long for the security of a grand narrative to make sense of their lives but can only engage in futile speculation about the meaning of it all. They are on the verge of a breakthrough to an acceptance of their postmodern condition of fragmentation, but dont quite make it. Stoppards transformation of Hamlet can be seen as a formalized 20th century statement regarding the nature of truth: it is contingent, contextual and ultimately unknowable. This, of course, is Rosencrantz and Guildensterns dilemma; they are trapped in limbo between knowing and not knowing. Stoppard has been criticized for omitting certain scenes (e.g. III, ii and iii) which portray Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in a light other than two bewildered innocents. However it should be remembered Stoppard is interested in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as victims. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is his creation. He has taken an idea from Hamlet and developed it dramatically. What he is not interested in is critiquing Hamlet. Students should make lists of the scenes in Hamlet which have been incorporated into Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, and write down what has been added and what has been changed. Then you should consider how these contribute to Stoppards purpose. Context Hamlet The flourishing of Revenge Tragedy in Shakespeares time was fuelled by the enormous changes taking place in Elizabethan and Jacobean society. His was an age characterized by turmoil and uncertainty. The division of the church in England divided the people into Catholics and Protestants. Religious doubt, albeit carefully disguised, was becoming more prevalent. The consequent unrest and suspicion often resulted in surveillance and betrayal in personal relations as well as in the broader social and political sphere. Assassination attempts on Elizabeth and James resulted in cruel and brutal retaliations. There was also the ever present threat of foreign invasion to add to the feelings of insecurity. Medieval feudalism was in decline, but it was dying a defiant death; the aristocracy resorted to harsh measures to shore up its authority and maintain the hierarchical order which had served it so well. Hamlet dramatically reflects this challenge to tradition, the political instability of his society and the religious questioning. Medieval-renaissance-modern; feudalism-sceptism-humanism-individualism; old world moral absolutes-new world rational scepticism; religious certainties-inner doubt and psychological probing. Humanism and notion of identity. Hamlet asks the modern questions, who am I? and what am I doing here? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Stoppard began writing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead in 1964 and it was first performed in 1966 at the Edinburgh Fringe Theatre. The 20th century, and more specifically the late 20th century, was a time of change and turmoil. The sixties was characterized by an irreverent mood born out of a period of rebellion and challenge to existing structures and beliefs. In all areas of social activity Stoppards society (which is mainly first world, capitalist, democratic and relatively affluent) was undergoing transformation. Many characterize this historical period as the turn on, tune in, drop out generation because of its experimentation with drugs, alternative lifestyles and sexually promiscuous attitudes. Others characterize the sixties as a decade of student political protest. They cite the anti-Vietnam campaigns, nuclear disarmament protests and the Paris student riots as important landmarks in the politicization of young people. The British popular culture scene included television comedy in the form of Monty Pythons Flying Circus and Englands first soap opera Coronation Street, the pop music explosion kick started by the Beatles, stage musicals such as Oliver, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat a nd Jesus Christ Superstar. The mood of questioning, rebellion and playfulness can be seen in the way that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead travesties Hamlet; the tragedians, serious in their treatment of Death and holding a mirror up to life in Hamlet are now reduced to comedians and potential pornographers in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. The treatment of death has also undergone a transformation from the profound to the comic, from high tragedy to slapstick comedy. 20th Century despair-nihilism-death of god-existentialism and the notion of identity-swinging sixties-optimism and disillusionment-modernism-postmodernism-Theatre of the Absurd-nonheroic-Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ask the modern questions, who am I? and what am I doing here? Ideas/Themes Change * Consistency and inconsistency * Tradition and progress Hamlet is about change and transition whereas Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is about the inability to effect transformation or change. Where Hamlet undergoes a transformation in perspective and acts to influence events, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are seen as impotent little men unable to influence events. Death * What is death? * What is it to die? Throughout literature there is a strong connection between truth and death. The quest for meaning is seen in terms of killing and death. The tragedians offer yet another view: they see death as the climax of great tragedy. Identity The humanist model (see Liberal Humanist reading below) sees Hamlet as epitomizing the human condition. It takes for granted a universalism of human nature and identity which transcends time and place. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have no fixed identities. Stoppard is exploring the 20th century notion of existentialism which is essentially concerned with the problem of self identity. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as representatives of the human condition, have no control over their fate and are the victims of arbitrary circumstances. They have no past and no future and only exist through other peoples definitions of them, and are unable to accept the lack of guidance and fashion their own future out of the here and now. Their existential position is echoed throughout the play as they continually try to find an explanation for their existence. In the same way that Hamlet functions as a metaphor for the human condition so do Rosencrantz and Guildenstern represent modern humanitys existential despair. Providence, fate, destiny The notions of free will and determinism are central to both plays. Hamlet has the free will to act but is thwarted by his belief system. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern represent the idea that our lives are predetermined because even though we do have choices in life, we do not have enough information to choose intelligently. Existentialism, religion and the meaning of life Shakespeares England was very religious. The Christian church was an active participant in all areas of social and political life. Hamlet too operates in this Christian context and all events in the play should be regarded in this light; indeed religious belief is often a instigator or inhibitor of dramatic action. The 20th century is often referred to as the century that killed God. In Western society there has been a decline in the number of Christians and of the significance of the church in everyday life. Stoppard evokes the mood of 20th century despair through his appropriation of the philosophical movement called existentialism. By dramatizing the loss of centers resulting in a despairing desire to know and to believe, Stoppard is commenting on the nature of 20th century existence. Appearance and reality, illusion and truth The player in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead says, truth is only that which is taken to be true. Its the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesnt make any difference so long as it is honored. One acts on assumptions. Consider the concept of truth as it is dramatically realized in Hamlet. Examine how both plays use things such as imagery, symbols, clothing, the play-within-a-play device, role-playing and language to set up mirrors for reality through which to challenge our notions of illusion and truth. Appearance and reality is a dominant theme in Hamlet and Elizabethan audiences would understand that there is a truth behind the disguise. Rational reason and scientific rationalism Rational reason was the basis of Humanism and was the working philosophy of Shakespeares time. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern attempt to discover patterns and purposes in their existence by use of scientific logic. Theatre as a metaphor for life (and the nature of art) There are several examples in both plays where the boundaries between the actors and the audience are erased. Shakespeare and Stoppard employ metatheatre in order to comment on the analogy between drama and life: both construct realities. Hamlet is a theatrical play. It is about acting and, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is full of theatrical references. Theatrical terminology and imagery abounds, characters act or attempt to act, characters are instructed and instruct others in the art of acting, there are plays within plays and the audience are reminded that it are not only watching a play but that it might be the actors in someone elses play! Both playwrights cleverly use structure and form to draw our attention to the nature of truth and reality. Stoppard himself is acting upon Shakespeares text. Form Hamlet The genre-Tragedy-Revenge Tragedy-Aristotle-Seneca-Elizabethan/Jacobean-Shakespeare Structure-stagecraft-dramatic techniques (ghost, soliloquy, play within a play)-language-imagery-setting Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead The genre, Theatre of the Absurd, modern and postmodern characteristics (pastiche, irony, parody, word games, vaudeville, burlesque, self reflexivity, absence of a frame of reference) Intertextuality (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T S Eliot and Waiting for Godot, a play by Samuel Beckett about impotence and despair, view of life as hopeless). Prufrock and Godot are both examples of modernist texts where the romantic tragic hero is regarded as a myth. We have the anti-hero or ordinary person on centre stage cut adrift in a drama over which he or she has no control, aimless and looking for direction and speculating about the meaning of it all. Modernism is characterized by nostalgia for the certainty, faith and authority of the past. Thus there is a tone of lament, pessimism and despair. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is modernist in this sense but there are aspects of postmodernism, e.g. the philosophizing, speculating and agonizing by Hamlet over grand issues (such as meaning of life, death and religion) is treated in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead as farce through the modes of satire, irony, burlesque and parody. Stoppards use of Hamlet is in some ways a postmodern gesture. By appropriating such an iconic text as Hamlet and presenting it from the perspective of peripheral characters and then playing upon them for his own purposes, Stoppard demonstrates that the human experience cannot be fully understood by focusing on the dominant narrative. The depiction of reality as a game or spectacle, the destabilization of identity and the inability of language to offer security of meaning are further pointers to the postmodern condition of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. They are indeed bewildered innocents cast adrift in a disinterested and dispassionate universe. The questioning and dismantling of the individual authorial self conclusively marks the text as a postmodern inquiry into how meaning is constructed. Remember that the vital difference between modernism and postmodernism is that the former laments fragmentation and the latter celebrates it. So be cautious in referring to RG as a postmodern text. It is a modernist text that has some postmodernist characteristics. The intense seriousness of the modernists is diluted by the humor and parody of the postmodernists. Language Hamlet The role of language in Hamlet is to create meaning. It is the utterance of the paragon of animals. It is a sublime human achievement, and indeed Shakespeares language has been valued throughout the centuries as the pinnacle of linguistic artistry. Language in Hamlet expresses beauty, truth and reason as well as being a tool of deception and manipulation. It therefore has transcendent meaning which when analyzed will reveal truth. Traditional criticism, based as it is on Liberal Humanist values, focuses on a universal humanity which can be understood through a close analysis of language and form. In Hamlet we find Shakespeares full repertoire of language skills: verse, prose, formal, colloquial, dialogue, soliloquies, aside, puns, irony, parody, a range of imagery, etc. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead Stoppards language on the other hand expresses the ambiguous nature of truth. There is no underlying fixed meaning in words. The lack of control over their lives is mirrored in the fragmentation of Rosencrantz and Guildensterns language and their persistent use of question. The language games that Rosencrantz and Guildensterns engage in owes an intertextual debt to the influential 20th century philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Stoppard has appropriated one of Wittgensteins theories of language which essentially states that language cannot express a universal truth. Language resembles moves in a game and outside of the game has no meaning whatsoever. This notion of language having no transcendent value is another point of difference between the two plays. Stoppard also reveals his range of verbal artistry. His play is rich in the playful use of clichÃÆ'Â ©, black humour, irony, puns, burlesque, cultural reference, etc. His use of colloquial and clichÃÆ'Â ©d language to state humankinds existential dilemma serves to undermine the value traditionally attached to Shakespeares elevated poetry. The numinous authority of Shakespeares language is thus deflated. Notwithstanding all this, we should never lose sight of the fact that Stoppard is a playwright and his intention is to entertain us. Stoppards style, especially his humor, wit and comedic timing, is the means by which the bleakness of Rosencrantz and Guildensterns (and by analogy our own) predicament is made palatable through the medium of drama. Readings The audience response to both texts is determined by values, culture and context. Remember, our course this semester has focused on a study of the language of texts, consideration of purposes and audiences, and analysis of the content, values and attitudes conveyed through a range of readings. With that in mind, you need to understand the following critical approaches and acquaint yourselves with the theoretical principles underpinning each of the approaches. * Traditional Criticism which is based upon a Liberal Humanist approach. * Modern Criticism which is based upon a Post-structuralist and New Historicist approach. The essential difference between the two approaches is that the first tends to focus on character and the universality of the human condition and the latter emphasizes the influence of context and the application of theory to the process of reading.

Psychology Project Essay

Final Output: The Person in Me (An Autobiography that uses Psychological Concepts) Objective: The purpose of this final output for all General Psychology classes is for you, our students, to be able to identify the role of psychology and various psychological concepts in your lives using a lifespan approach. This activity aims to help you understand that psychology can be applied on a daily basis and that the field can: help explain who you are as a unique individual and as part of the social environment help you internalize how building good relationships are essential in life assist you in handling your challenges and choosing your direction in life How to go about writing your story: 1. Think about your audience and try to see things from their perspectives. Aside from the person who will evaluate the quality of your autobiography, who else will you be sharing it with? Is it your friends, family members? What type of readers are they? Do they prefer stories with humor? Do they like reading facts and itty-bitty details? 2. Think about your capacity – can you easily express yourself in prose or in poetry? Do you need to include pictures so that you can tell your story? 3. Think of the direction of your story. Will you be doing Flashbacks? Will you be writing in Chronological order? 4. After deciding on the above, start writing your story. Let the words flow since your first work will most likely be your draft. 5. When you have written your story, read it again. This time analyze which parts of your story can be connected to psychological concepts. 6. Once you have identified these parts, insert the psychological concepts into the story. E.g. â€Å"I can remember that when I was 7 years old, I lied to my mother about not getting money from her wallet. Although this was deliberate deception and although I regret the day that I did it, I do understand now that what had transpired was actually part of my cognitive development. You see, the Theory of Cognitive Development of Jean Piaget states that a child who is becoming less egocentric comes to understand the perspective of other people. I lied to my mom because I knew she would be annoyed and that she would punish me. I understood that she would have gone berserk over my behavior and I, being the mischievous child that I was, had no intention of allowing my buns to get spanked.† 7. Underline all psychological concepts that you use in your story. You are to use at least 25 and this should span all l of the chapters. 8. Your autobiography should be exactly 10 pages with 1.5 spacing and the default font size of 11 and font type of Times New Roman. 9. The last day of the submission of your autobiography is the first day of the Final Exams Week. We, at the Psychology Department, hope that you have enjoyed the journey of learning more about yourselves, your peers, others and life in general. Good luck in your endeavors and and we’ll see you around.

An Introduction to Marxist Economic Theory

An Introduction to Marxist ECONOMIC THEORY Ernest Mandel 2 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc ) was the most influential exponent of Marxist economic theory in the Western world during the second half of the 20th century, and is best known for his masterful two-volume work Marxist Economic Theory (1962) and his brilliant Late Capitalism (1972).In the former, he demonstrated that it was possible, on the basis of the contemporary data, to reconstitute the whole economic system of Karl Marx 100 years after the first publication of Marx’s Capital. In the latter work, Mandel provided an explanation of the causes of the 20-year â€Å"wave† of rapid growth of the world capitalist economy after World War II, which also demonstrated that it would soon be followed by an indeterminately â€Å"long wave† of much slower economic growth, and recurrent social and political crises in the developed capitalist countries.Late Capitalism also provided the first comprehensive analys is of the new features of global capitalism that emerged in the post-war period and that are still with us today — transnational corporations as the dominant form of capitalist business organisation, the enormous growth of the services sector, the crucial role of state expenditure in propping up an economic system marked by financial instability, long-term stagnation punctuated by speculative booms, mindless consumerism and accelerating environmental destruction.This pamphlet, which was first published in French in 1964, provides a concise exposition of the elementary princples of Marxist economic theory. In the first section, Mandel elucidates the basic categories of Marx’s economic doctrine from the emergence of the social surplus product to the labour theory of value. In the second section, he explains the basic laws of motion of capitalism and its inherent contradictions.In the final second, he applies these to some of the new features exhibited by the new stage of imperialist capitalism that emerged after the second world war, which at the time he termed â€Å"neo-capitalism†. In his more mature work Late Capitalism, Mandel abandoned this term in favour of the designation â€Å"late capitalism†, explaining in the introduction to 4 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory that work that the designation â€Å"neo-capitalism† could be falsely â€Å"interpreted to imply either a radical continuity or discontinuity with traditional capitalism†.Instead, Mandel stressed that the â€Å"era of late capitalism is not a new epoch of capitalist development [but] merely a further development of the imperialist, monopoly-capitalist epoch† with â€Å"the characteristics of the imperialist epoch enumerated by Lenin† at the beginning of the 20th century remaining â€Å"fully valid for late capitalism†.? I. thE thEory of VAluE And surplus VAluE In the last analysis, every step forward in the history of civili sation has been brought about by an increase in the productivity of labour.As long as a given group of men barely produced enough to keep itself alive, as long as there was no surplus over and above this necessary product, it was impossible for a division of labour to take place and for artisans, artists or scholars to make their appearance. Under these conditions, the technical prerequisites for such specialisation could not possibly be attained. socIAl surplus product As long as the productivity of labour remains at a level where one man can only produce enough for his own subsistence, social division does not take place and any social differentiation within society is impossible.Under these conditions, all men are producers and they are all on the same economic level. Every increase in the productivity of labour beyond this low point makes a small surplus possible, and once there is a surplus of products, once man’s two hands can produce more than is needed for his own sub sistence, then the conditions have been set for a struggle over how this surplus will be shared. From this point on, the total output of a social group no longer consists solely of labour necessary for the subsistence of the producers.Some of this labour output may now be used to release a section of society from having to work for its own subsistence. Whenever this situation arises, a section of society can become a ruling class, whose outstanding characteristic is its emancipation from the need of First presented at an educational weekend organised by the Paris Federation of the United Socialist Party in 1963 and subsequently published in Les Cahiers du Centre d’Etudes Socialistes, February 1964. 6 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory working for its own subsistence.Thereafter, the labour of the producers can be divided into two parts. A part of this labour continues to be used for the subsistence of the producers themselves and we call this part necessary labour; the other part is used to maintain the ruling class and we give it the name surplus labour. Let us illustrate this by the very clear example of plantation slavery, as it existed in certain regions and periods of the Roman Empire, or as we find it in the West Indies and the islands of Portuguese Africa starting with the 17th century, on the great plantations which were established there.In these tropical areas, even the slave’s food was generally not provided by the master; the slave had to produce this himself by working a tiny plot of ground on Sundays and the products from this labour constituted his store of food. On six days of the week the slave worked on the plantation and received in return none of the products of his labour. This is the labour which creates a social surplus product, surrendered by the slave as soon as it is produced and belonging solely to the slavemaster.The work week, which in this case is seven days, can be divided into two parts: the work of one day, Sunday, constitutes necessary labour, that labour which provides the products for the subsistence of the slave and his family; the work of the other six days is surplus labour and all of its products go to the master, are used for his sustenance and his enrichment as well. The great domains of the early Middle Ages furnish us with another illustration. The land of these domains was divided into three parts: the communal lands consisting of forest, meadows, swamps, etc. the land worked by the serf for his own and his family’s subsistence; and finally, the land worked by the serf in order to maintain the feudal lord. The work week during this period was usually six days, not seven. It was divided into two equal parts: the serf worked three days on the land from which the yield belonged to him; the other three days he worked on the feudal lord’s land, without remuneration, supplying free labour to the ruling class. The products of each of these two very different types o f labour can be defined in different terms.When the producer is performing necessary labour, he is producing a necessary product. When he is performing surplus labour, he is producing a social surplus product. Thus, social surplus product is that part of social production which is produced by the labouring class but appropriated by the ruling class, regardless of the form the social surplus product may assume, whether this be one of natural products, or commodities to be sold, or money. Surplus value is simply the monetary form of the social surplus product. The Theory of Value and Surplus Value When the ruling class appropriates the part of society’s production previously defined as â€Å"surplus product† exclusively in the monetary form, then we use the term â€Å"surplus value† instead of â€Å"surplus product†. As we shall see later on, however, the above only constitutes a preliminary approach to the definition of surplus value. How does social surpl us product come into existence? It arises as a consequence of a gratuitous appropriation, that is, an appropriation without compensation, by a ruling class of a part of the production of a producing class.When the slave worked six days a week on a plantation and the total product of his labour was taken by the master without any compensation to the slave, the origin of the social surplus product here is in the gratuitous labour, the uncompensated labour, supplied by the slave to the master. When the serf worked three days a week on the lord’s land, the origin of this income, of this social surplus product, is also to be found in the uncompensated labour, the gratuitous labour, furnished by the serf.We will see further on that the origin of capitalist surplus value, that is to say, the revenue of the bourgeois class in capitalist society, is exactly the same: it is uncompensated labour, gratuitous labour, which the proletarian, the wage worker, gives the capitalist without rec eiving any value in exchange. coMModItIEs, usE VAluE And ExchAngE VAluE We have now developed several basic definitions which will be used throughout this exposition. A number of others must be added at this point. Every product of human labour normally possesses utility; it must be able to satisfy a human need.We may therefore say that every product of human labour has a use value. The term â€Å"use value† will, however, be used in two different senses. We will speak of the use value of a commodity; we will also talk about use values, as when we refer, for example, to a society in which only use values are produced, that is to say, where products are created for direct consumption either by the producers themselves or by ruling classes which appropriate them. Together with this use value, a product of human labour can also have another value, an exchange value.It may be produced for exchange on the market place, for the purpose of being sold, rather than for direct consumpt ion by the producers or by wealthy classes. A mass of products which has been created for the purpose of being sold can no longer be considered as the production of simple use values; it is now a production of commodities. The commodity, therefore, is a product created to be exchanged on the market, as opposed to one which has been made for direct consumption. Every 8 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory commodity must have both a use value and an exchange value.It must have a use value or else nobody would buy it, since a purchaser would be concerned with its ultimate consumption, with satisfying some want of his by this purchase. A commodity without a use value to anyone would consequently be unsaleable, would constitute useless production, would have no exchange value precisely because it had no use value. On the other hand, every product which has use value does not necessarily have exchange value. It has an exchange value only to the extent that the society itself, in whi ch the commodity is produced, is founded on exchange, is a society where exchange is common practice.Are there societies where products do not have exchange value? The basis for exchange value, and a fortiori for trade and the market place, is constituted by a given degree of development of the division of labour. In order for products not to be directly consumed by their producers, it is essential that everybody should not be engaged in turning out the same thing. If a particular community has no division of labour, or only its most rudimentary form, then it is clear that no reason for exchange exists. Normally, a wheat farmer has nothing to exchange with another wheat farmer.But as soon as a division of labour exists, as soon as there is contact between social groups producing different use values, then exchange can come about, at first on an occasional basis, subsequently on a more permanent one. In this way, little by little, products which are made to be exchanged, commodities, make their appearance alongside those products which are simply made for the direct consumption of their producers. In capitalist society, commodity production, the production of exchange values, has reached its greatest development.It is the first society in human history where the major part of production consists of commodities. It is not true, however, that all production under capitalism is commodity production. Two classes of products still remain simple use value. The first group consists of all things produced by the peasantry for its own consumption, everything directly consumed on the farms where it is produced. Such production for self-consumption by the farmer exists even in advanced capitalist countries like the United States, although it constitutes only a small part of total agricultural production.In general, the more backward the agriculture of a country, the greater is the fraction of agricultural production going for self-consumption. This factor makes it extreme ly difficult to calculate the exact national income of such countries. The second group of products in capitalist society which are not commodities but remain simple use value consists of all things produced in the home. Despite the fact that considerable human labour goes into this type of household The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 9 production, it still remains a production of use values and not of commodities.Every time a soup is made or a button sewn on a garment, it constitutes production, but it is not production for the market. The appearance of commodity production and its subsequent regularisation and generalisation have radically transformed the way men labour and how they organise society. thE MArxIst thEory of AlIEnAtIon You have no doubt already heard about the Marxist theory of alienation. The emergence, regularisation and generalisation of commodity production are directly related to the expanding character of this phenomenon of alienation.We cannot dwell on this aspect of the question here but it is extremely important to call attention to it, since the history of trade covers far more than the capitalist era. It also includes small-scale commodity production, which we will discuss later. There is also a postcapitalist society based on commodities, a transitional society between capitalism and socialism, such as present-day Soviet society, for the latter still rests in very large measure on the foundations of exchange value production.Once we have grasped certain fundamental characteristics of a society based on commodities, we can readily see why it is impossible to surmount certain phenomena of alienation in the transitional period between capitalism and socialism, as in Soviet society, for example. Obviously this phenomenon of alienation does not exist — at least in the same form — in a society where commodity production is unknown and where the life of the individual and his social activity are united in the most elementa ry way. Man works, but generally not by himself; most often he is part of a collective group having a more or less organic structure.His labour is a direct transformation of material things. All of this means that labour activity, the act of production, the act of consumption, and the relations between the individual and his society are ruled by a condition of equilibrium which has relative stability and permanence. We should not, of course, embellish the picture of primitive society, which was subject to pressures and periodic catastrophes because of its extreme poverty. Its equilibrium was constantly endangered by scarcity, hunger, natural disasters, etc.But in the periods between catastrophes, especially after agriculture had attained a certain degree of development and when climatic conditions were favourable, this kind of society endowed all human activities with a large degree of unity, harmony and stability. Such disastrous consequences of the division of labour as the elimin ation of all aesthetic activity, artistic inspiration and creative activity from the act 10 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory of production and the substitution of purely mechanical and repetitive tasks were nonexistent in primitive society.On the contrary, most of the arts, music, sculpture, painting, the dance, were originally linked to production, to labour. The desire to give an attractive and appealing form to products which were to be used either by the individual, his family, or larger kinship groups, found a normal, harmonious and organic expression within the framework of the day’s work. Labour was not looked upon as an obligation imposed from without, first of all because it was far less intense, far less exhausting than under capitalism today. It conformed more closely to the rhythms of the human organism as well as to the rhythms of nature.The number of working days per year rarely exceeded 150 to 200, whereas under capitalism the figure is dangerously cl ose to 300 and sometimes even greater. Furthermore, there was a unity between the producer, his product and its consumption, since he generally produced for his own use or for those close to him, so that his work possessed a directly functional aspect. Modern alienation originates basically in the cleavage between the producer and his product, resulting both from the division of labour and commodity production.In other words, it is the consequence of working for the market, for unknown consumers, instead of for consumption by the producer himself. The other side of the picture is that a society which only produces use values, that is, goods which will be consumed directly by their producers, has always in the past been an impoverished society. Not only was it subject to the hazards of nature but it also had to set very narrow limits to man’s wants, since these had to conform exactly to its degree of poverty and limited variety of products.Not all human wants are innate to man . There is a constant interaction between production and wants, between the development of the productive forces and the rise of new wants. Only in a society where labour productivity will be developed to its highest point, where an infinite variety of products will be available, will it be possible for man to experience a continuous expansion of his wants, a development of his own unlimited potential, an integrated development of his humanity. thE lAw of VAluEOne of the consequences of the appearance and progressive generalisation of commodity production is that labour itself begins to take on regular and measurable characteristics; in other words, it ceases to be an activity tied to the rhythms of nature and according with man’s own physiological rhythms. Up to the 19th century and possibly even into the 20th, the peasants in various regions of Western Europe did not work in a regulated way, that is to The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 11 say, they did not work with the same intensity every month of the year.There were periods in the work year when they worked very hard and other periods, particularly during the winter, when all activity virtually came to a halt. It was in the most backward agricultural areas of most of the capitalist countries that capitalist society, in the course of its development, found a most attractive source of reserve manpower, for here was a labour force available for four to six months a year at much lower wages, in view of the fact that a part of its subsistence was provided by its agricultural activity.When we look at the more highly developed and prosperous farms, those bordering the big cities, for example, and which are basically on the road to becoming industrialised, we see that work is much more regular and the amount of expended labour much greater, being distributed in a regular way throughout the year, with dead seasons progressively eliminated. This holds true not only for our times but even as early as the Middle Ages, at least from the 12th century on.The closer we get to the cities, that is to say, to the marketplace, the more the peasant’s labour becomes labour for the market, that is to say, commodity production, and the more regulated and more or less stable his labour becomes, just as if he were working inside an industrial enterprise. Expressed another way, the more generalised commodity production becomes, the greater the regulation of labour and the more society becomes organised on the basis of an accounting system founded on labour.When we examine the already fairly advanced division of labour within a commune at the beginning of commercial and craft development in the Middle Ages, or the collectives in such civilisations as the Byzantine, Arab, Hindu, Chinese and Japanese, certain common factors emerge. We are struck by the fact that a very advanced integration of agriculture and various craft techniques exists and that regularity of labour is true for the countrysi de as well as the city, so that an accounting system in terms of labour, in labour-hours, has become the force governing all the activity and even the very structure of the collectives.In the chapter on the law of value in my Marxist Economic Theory, I give a whole series of examples of this accounting system in work-hours. There are Indian villages where a certain caste holds a monopoly of the blacksmith craft but continues to work the land at the same time in order to feed itself. The rule which has been established is this: when a blacksmith is engaged to make a tool or weapon for a farm, the client supplies the raw materials and also works the blacksmith’s land during the whole period that the latter is engaged in making the implement.Here is a very transparent way of stating that exchange is governed by an equivalence in work-hours. In the Japanese villages of the Middle Ages, an accounting system in work- 12 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory hours, in the liter al sense of the term, existed inside the village community. The village accountant kept a kind of great book in which he entered the number of hours of work done by villagers on each others’ fields, since agriculture was still mainly based on cooperative labour, with harvesting, farm construction and stock breeding being done in common.The number of work-hours furnished by the members of one household to the members of another was very carefully tallied. At the end of the year, the exchanges had to balance, that is, the members of household B were required to have given household A exactly the same number of work-hours which members of household A had given household B during the year. The Japanese even refined things to the point — almost 1000 years ago! where they took into account that children provided a smaller quantity of labour than adults, so that an hour of child labour was â€Å"worth† only a half-hour of adult labour. A whole system of accounting was set up along these lines. There is another example which gives us a direct insight into this accounting system based on labour-time: the conversion of feudal rent from one form to another. In feudal society, the agricultural surplus product could take three different forms: rent in the form of labour (the corvee), rent in kind, and money rent.When a change is made from the corvee to rent in kind, obviously a process of conversion takes place. Instead of giving the lord three days of labour per week, the peasant now gives him a certain quantity of wheat, livestock, etc. , on a seasonal basis. A second conversion takes place in the changeover from rent in kind to money rent. These two conversions must be based on a fairly rigorous accounting in work-hours if one of the two parties does not care to suffer a loss in the process.For example, if at the time the first conversion was effected, the peasant gave the lord a quantity of wheat which required only 75 workdays of labour, whereas p reviously he had given the lord 150 workdays of labour in the same year, then this conversion of labour-rent into rent in kind would result in the sudden impoverishment of the lord and a rapid enrichment of the serfs. The landlords — you can depend on them! — were careful to see to it when the conversion was made that the different forms of rent were closely equivalent. Of course the conversion could eventually turn out to be bad one for one of the participating classes, for example, against the landlords, if a sharp rise in agricultural prices occurred after rent was converted from rent in kind to money rent, but such a result would be historical in character and not directly attributable to the conversion per se. The origin of this economy based on an accounting in labour-time is also clearly apparent in the division of labour within the village as it existed The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 13 between agriculture and the crafts. For a long time the division rem ained quite rudimentary.A section of the peasantry continued to produce part of its own clothing for a protracted historical period, which in Western Europe extended almost a thousand years; that is, from the beginning of the medieval cities right up to the 19th century. The technique of making clothing was certainly no mystery to the cultivator of the soil. As soon as a regular system of exchange between the farmer and textile craftsman was established, standard equivalents were likewise established — for example, an ell of cloth [a measure varying from 27 to 48 inches] would be exchanged for 10 pounds of butter, not for 100 pounds.Obviously the peasants knew, on the basis of their own experience, the approximate labour-time needed to produce a given quantity of cloth. Had there not been a more or less exact equivalence between the time needed to produce the cloth and the time needed to produce the butter for which it was exchanged, there would have been an immediate shift i n the division of labour.If cloth production were more lucrative than butter production, the butter producers would switch to producing cloth. Since society here was only at the threshold of an extreme division of labour, that is to say, it was still at a point where the boundaries between different techniques were not clearly marked, the passage from one economic activity to another was still possible, particularly when striking material gains were possible by means of such a change.In the cities of the Middle Ages as well, a very skilfully calculated equilibrium existed between the various crafts and was written into the charters which specified almost to the minute the amount of labour-time necessary for the production of different articles. It is inconceivable that under such conditions a shoemaker or blacksmith might get the same amount of money for a product which took half the labour-time which a weaver or other artisan might require in order to get the same amount of money f or his products.Here again we clearly see the mechanism of an accounting system in workhours, a society functioning on the basis of an economy of labour-time, which is generally characteristic of the whole phase which we call small-scale commodity production. This is the phase intervening between a purely natural economy, in which only use values are produced, and capitalist society, in which commodity production expands without limit. dEtErMInAtIon of thE ExchAngE VAluE of coMModItIEsOnce we have determined that the production and exchange of commodities becomes regular and generalised in a society based on an economy of labourtime, on an accounting system in work-hours, we can readily understand why 14 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory the exchange of commodities, in its origins and inherent nature, rests on this fundamental basis of an accounting system in work-hours and consequently follows this general rule: the exchange value of a commodity is determined by the quanti ty of labour necessary to produce it.The quantity of labour is measured by the length of time it takes to produce the commodity. This general definition of the labour theory of value is the basis of both classical bourgeois political economy from the 17th century to the beginning of the 19th century, from William Petty to Ricardo; and Marxist economic theory, which took over the theory of labour value and perfected it. However, the general definition must be qualified in several respects.In the first place, not all men are endowed with the same capacity for work, with the same strength or the same degree of skill at their trade. If the exchange value of commodities depended only on the quantity of labour expended individually, that is, on the quantity of labour expended by each individual in the production of a commodity, we would arrive at this absurdity: the lazier or more incompetent the producer, and the larger the number of hours he would spend in making a pair of shoes, the gr eater would be the value of the shoes!This is obviously impossible since exchange value is not a moral reward for mere willingness to work but an objective bond set up between independent producers in order to equalise the various crafts in a society based both on a division of labour and an economy of labour-time. In such a society wasted labour receives no compensation; on the contrary, it is automatically penalised. Whoever puts more time into producing a pair of shoes than the average necessary hours — an average determined by the average productivity of labour and recorded in the Guild Charters, for example! such a person has wasted human labour, worked to no avail for a certain number of hours. He will receive nothing in exchange for these wasted hours. Expressed another way, the exchange value of a commodity is not determined by the quantity of labour expended by each individual producer engaged in the production of this commodity but by the quantity of labour socially necessary to produce it. The expression â€Å"socially necessary† means: the quantity of labour necessary under the average conditions of labour productivity existing in a given country at a given time.The above qualification has very important applications when we examine the functioning of capitalist society more closely. Another clarifying statement must be added here. Just what do we mean by a â€Å"quantity of labour†? Workers differ in their qualifications. Is there complete equality between one person’s hour of work and everybody else’s, regardless of such differences in skills? Once again the question is not a moral one but has The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 15 o do with the internal logic of a society based on an equality between skills, an equality in the marketplace, and where any disruption of this equality would immediately destroy the social equilibrium. What would happen, for example, if an hour’s work by an unskilled laboure r was worth as much as an hour’s work by a skilled craftsman, who had spent four to six years as an apprentice in acquiring his skill? Obviously, no one would want to become skilled. The hours of work spent in learning a craft would be wasted hours since the craftsman would not be compensated for them after becoming qualified.In an economy founded on an accounting system of work-hours, the young will desire to become skilled only if the time lost during their training period is subsequently paid for. Our definition of the exchange value of a commodity must therefore be completed as follows: â€Å"An hour of labour by a skilled worker must be considered as complex labour, as compound labour, as a multiple of an hour of unskilled labour; the coefficient of multiplication obviously cannot be an arbitrary one but must be based on the cost of acquiring a given skill. It should be pointed out, in passing, that there was always a certain fuzziness in the prevailing explanation of c ompound labour in the Soviet Union under Stalin which has persisted to this very day. It is claimed that compensation for work should be based on the quantity and quality of the work, but the concept of quality is no longer understood in the Marxist sense of the term, that is to say, as a quality measurable quantitatively by means of a specific coefficient of multiplication. On the contrary, the idea of quality is used in the ourgeois ideological sense, according to which the quality of labour is supposed to be determined by its social usefulness, and this is used to justify the incomes of marshals, ballerinas and industrial managers, which are ten times higher than the incomes of unskilled labourers. Such a theory belongs in the domain of apologetics despite its widespread use to justify the enormous differences in income which existed under Stalin and continue to exist in the Soviet Union today, although to a lesser extent.The exchange value of a commodity, then, is determined by the quantity of labour socially necessary for its production, with skilled labour being taken as a multiple of simple labour and the coefficient of multiplication being a reasonably measurable quantity. This is the kernel of the Marxist theory of value and the basis for all Marxist economic theory in general.Similarly, the theory of social surplus product and surplus labour, which we discussed at the beginning of this work, constitutes the basis for all Marxist sociology and is the bridge connecting Marx’s sociological and historical analysis, his theory of classes and the development of society 16 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory generally, to Marxist economic theory, and more precisely, to the Marxist analysis of all commodity-producing societies of a precapitalist, capitalist and postcapitalist character. hAt Is socIAlly nEcEssAry lAbour? A short while back I stated that the particular definition of the quantity of socially necessary labour for producing a commod ity had a very special and extremely important application in the analysis of capitalist society. I think it will be more useful to deal with this point now although logically it might belong to a later section of this presentation. The totality of all commodities produced in a country at a given time has been produced to satisfy the wants of the sum total of the members of this society.Any article which did not satisfy somebody’s needs, which had no use value for anyone, would be a priori unsaleable, would have no exchange value, would not constitute a commodity but simply a product of caprice or the idle jest of some producer. From another angle, the sum total of buying power which exists in this given society at a given moment and which is not to be hoarded but spent in the market, must be used to buy the sum total of commodities produced, if there is to be economic equilibrium.This equilibrium therefore implies that the sum total of social production, of the available pro ductive forces in this society, of its available work-hours, has been distributed among the various sectors of industry in the same proportions as consumers distribute their buying power in satisfying their various wants. When the distribution of productive forces no longer corresponds to this division in wants, the economic equilibrium is destroyed and both overproduction and underproduction appear side by side.Let us give a rather commonplace example: toward the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, a city like Paris had a coach-building industry, which together with associated harness trades employed thousands or even tens of thousands of workers. In the same period the automobile industry was emerging and although still quite small it already numbered some scores of manufacturers employing several thousands of workers. Now what is the process taking place during this period? On the one hand, the number of carriages begins to decline and on the other, the number of a utomobiles begins to increase.The production of carriages and carriage equipment therefore shows a trend toward exceeding social needs, as these are reflected in the manner in which the inhabitants of Paris are dividing their buying power; on the other side of the picture, the production of automobiles is below social needs, for from the time the industry was launched until the advent The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 17 of mass production, a climate of scarcity existed in this industry. The supply of automobiles on the market was never equal to the demand. How do we express these phenomena in terms of the labour theory of value?We can say that in the carriage industry more labour is expended than is socially necessary, that a part of the labour expended by the sum total of companies in the carriage industry is socially wasted labour, which no longer finds an equivalent on the marketplace and is consequently producing unsaleable goods. In capitalist society, when goods are unsal eable it means that an investment of human labour has been made in a specific industrial branch which turns out to be socially unnecessary labour, that is to say, it is labour which finds no equivalent in buying power in the marketplace.Labour which is not socially necessary is wasted labour; it is labour which produces no value. We can see from this that the concept of socially necessary labour embraces a whole series of phenomena. For the products of the carriage industry, supply exceeds demand, prices fall and goods remain unsaleable. The reverse is true in the automobile industry where demand exceeds supply, causing prices to rise and under-production to exist. To be satisfied with these commonplaces about supply and demand, however, means stopping at the psychological and individual aspects of the problem.On the other hand, if we probe into the deeper social and collective side of the problem, we begin to understand what lies below the surface in a society organised on the basi s of an economy of labour-time. The meaning of supply exceeding demand is that capitalist production, which is anarchistic, unplanned and unorganised, has anarchistically invested or expended more labour hours in an industrial branch than are socially necessary, so that a whole segment of labour-hours turns out to be pure loss, so much wasted human labour which remains unrequited by society.Conversely, an industrial sector where demand continues to be greater than supply can be considered as an underdeveloped sector in terms of social needs; it is therefore a sector expending fewer hours of labour than are socially necessary and it receives a bonus from society in order to stimulate an increase in production and achieve an equilibrium with social needs. This is one aspect of the problem of socially necessary labour in the capitalist system. The other aspect of the problem is more directly related to changes in the productivity of labour.It is the same thing but makes an abstraction of social needs, of the â€Å"use value† aspect of production. In capitalist society the productivity of labour is constantly changing. Generally speaking, there are always three types of enterprises (or industrial sectors): those which are technologically right at the social average; those which 18 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory are backward, obsolete, on the downgrade, below the social average; and those which are technologically advanced and above average in productivity.What do we mean when we say a sector or an enterprise is technologically backward and has a productivity of labour which is below the average? Such a branch or enterprise is analogous to our previously mentioned lazy shoemaker, that is, it is one which takes five hours to produce a specific quantity of goods in a period when the average social productivity demands that it be done in three hours. The two extra hours of expended labour are a total loss, a waste of social labour.A portion of the t otal amount of labour available to society having thus been wasted by an enterprise, it will receive nothing from society to compensate it. Concretely it means that the selling prices in this industry or enterprise, which is operating below average productivity, approach its production costs or even fall below them, that is to say, the enterprise is operating at a very low rate of profit or even at a loss. On the other hand, an enterprise or industrial sector with an above average level of productivity (like the shoemaker who can produce two pairs of shoes n three hours when the social average is one pair per three hours) economises in its expenditure of social labour and therefore makes a surplus profit, that is to say, the difference between its costs and selling prices will be greater than the average profit. The pursuit of this surplus profit is, of course, the driving force behind the entire capitalist economy. Every capitalist enterprise is forced by competition to try to get greater profits, for this is the only way it can constantly improve its technology and labour productivity.Consequently all firms are forced to take this same direction, and this of course implies that what at one time was an aboveaverage productivity winds up as the new average productivity, whereupon the surplus profit disappears. All the strategy of capitalist industry stems from this desire on the part of every enterprise to achieve a rate of productivity superior to the national average and thereby make a surplus profit, and this in turn provokes a movement which causes the surplus profit to disappear, by virtue of the trend for the average rate of labour productivity to rise continuously.This is the mechanism in the tendency for profit rates to become equalised. thE orIgIn And nAturE of surplus VAluE And now, what is surplus value? When we consider it from the viewpoint of the Marxist theory of value, the answer is readily found. Surplus value is simply the monetary form of th e social surplus product, that is to say, it is the monetary form of that part of the worker’s production which he surrenders to the owner of the means of production without receiving anything in return. The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 19 How is this surrender accomplished in practice within capitalist society?It takes place through the process of exchange, like all important operations in capitalist society, which are always relations of exchange. The capitalist buys the labour-power of the worker, and in exchange for this wage, he appropriates the entire production of that worker, all the newly produced value which has been incorporated into the value of this production. We can therefore say from here on that surplus value is the difference between the value produced by the worker and the value of his own labourpower. What is the value of labour-power?In capitalist society, labour-power is a commodity, and like the value of any other commodity, its value is the quanti ty of labour socially necessary to produce and reproduce it, that is to say, the living costs of the worker in the wide meaning of the term. The concept of a minimum living wage or of an average wage is not a physiologically rigid one but incorporates wants which change with advances in the productivity of labour. These wants tend to increase parallel with the progress in technique and they are consequently not comparable with any degree of accuracy for different periods.The minimum living wage of 1830 cannot be compared quantitatively with that of 1960, as the theoreticians of the French Communist party have learned to their sorrow. There is no valid way of comparing the price of a motorcycle in 1960 with the price of a certain number of kilograms of meat in 1830 in order to come up with a conclusion that the first â€Å"is worth† less than the second. Having made this reservation, we can now repeat that the living cost of labour-power constitutes its value and that surplus value is the difference between this living cost and the value created by this labour-power.The value produced by labour-power can be measured in a simple way by the length of time it is used. If a worker works 10 hours, he produces a value of 10 hours of work. If the worker’s living costs, that is to say, the equivalent of his wage, is also 10 hours of work, then no surplus value would result. This is only a special case of the more general rule: when the sum total of labour product is equal to the product required to feed and maintain the producer, there is no social surplus product.But in the capitalist system, the degree of labour productivity is such that the living costs of the worker are always less than the quantity of newly created value. This means that a worker who labours for 10 hours does not need the equivalent of 10 hours of labour in order to support himself in accordance with the average needs of the times. His equivalent wage is always only a fraction of his day’s labour; everything beyond this fraction is surplus value, free labour supplied by the worker and appropriated by the capitalist without an equivalent offset.If this difference did not exist, of course, then no employer would hire 20 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory any worker, since such a purchase of labour-power would bring no profit to the buyer. thE VAlIdIty of thE lAbour thEory of VAluE To conclude, we present three traditional proofs of the labour theory of value. The first of these is the analytical proof, which proceeds by breaking down the price of a commodity into its constituent elements and demonstrating that if the process is extended far enough, only labour will be found.The price of every commodity can be reduced to a certain number of components: the amortisation of machinery and buildings, which we call the renewal of fixed capital; the price of raw materials and accessory products; wages; and finally, everything which is surplus value, such as profit, rent, taxes, etc. So far as the last two components are concerned, wages and surplus value, it has already been shown that they are labour pure and simple. With regard to raw materials, most of their price is largely reducible to labour; for example, more than 60% of the mining cost of coal consists of wages.If we start by breaking down the average manufacturing cost of commodities into 40% for wages, 20% surplus value, 30% for raw materials and 10% in fixed capital; and if we assume that 60% of the cost of raw materials can be reduced to labour, then we already have 78% of the total cost reduced to labour. The rest of the cost of raw materials breaks down into the cost of other raw materials — reducible in turn to 60% labour — plus the cost of amortising machinery. The price of machinery consists to a large degree of labour (for example, 40%) and raw materials (for example, 40% also).The share of labour in the average cost of all commodities thus passes suc cessively to 83%, 87%, 89. 5%, etc. It is obvious that the further this breakdown is carried, the more the entire cost tends to be reduced to labour, and to labour alone. The second proof is the logical proof, and is the one presented in the beginning of Marx’s Capital. It has perplexed quite a few readers, for it is certainly not the simplest pedagogical approach to the question. Marx poses the question in the following way. The number of commodities is very great.They are interchangeable, which means that they must have a common quality, because everything which is interchangeable is comparable and everything which is comparable must have at least one quality in common. Things which have no quality in common are, by definition, not comparable with each other. Let us inspect each of these commodities. What qualities do they possess? The Theory of Value and Surplus Value 21 First of all, they have an infinite set of natural qualities: weight, length, density, colour, size, mo lecular nature; in short, all their natural physical, chemical and other qualities.Is there any one of the physical qualities which can be the basis for comparing them as commodities, for serving as the common measure of their exchange value? Could it be weight? Obviously not, since a pound of butter does not have the same value as a pound of gold. Is it volume or length? Examples will immediately show that it is none of these. In short, all those things which make up the natural quality of a commodity, everything which is a physical or chemical quality of this commodity, certainly determines its use value, its relative usefulness, but not its exchange value.Exchange value must consequently be abstracted from everything that consists of a natural physical quality in the commodity. A common quality must be found in all of these commodities which is not physical. Marx’s conclusion is that the only common quality in these commodities which is not physical is their quality of bei ng the products of human labour, of abstract human labour. Human labour can be thought of in two different ways. It can be considered as specific concrete labour, such as the labour of the baker, butcher, shoemaker, weaver, blacksmith, etc.But so long as it is thought of as specific concrete work, it is being viewed in its aspect of labour which produces only use values. Under these conditions we are concerning ourselves only with the physical qualities of commodities and these are precisely the qualities which are not comparable. The only thing which commodities have in common from the viewpoint of exchanging them is that they are all produced by abstract human labour, that is to say, by producers who are related to each other on a basis of equivalence as a result of the fact that they are all producing goods for exchange.The common quality of commodities, consequently, resides in the fact that they are the products of abstract human labour and it is this which supplies the measure of their exchange value, of their exchangeability. It is, consequently, the quality of socially necessary labour in the production of commodities which determines their exchange value. Let us immediately add that Marx’s reasoning here is both abstract and difficult and is at least subject to questioning, a point which many opponents of Marxism have seized upon and sought to use, without any marked success, however.Is the fact that all commodities are produced by abstract human labour really the only quality which they have in common, apart from their natural qualities? There are not a few writers who thought they had discovered others. In general, 22 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory however, these have always been reducible either to physical qualities or to the fact that they are products of abstract labour. A third and final proof of the correctness of the labour theory of value is the proof by reduction to the absurd. It is, moreover, the most elegant and most à ¢â‚¬Å"modern† of the proofs.Imagine for a moment a society in which living human labour has completely disappeared, that is to say, a society in which all production has been 100% automated. Of course, so long as we remain in the current intermediate stage, in which some labour is already completely automated, that is to say, a stage in which plants employing no workers exist alongside others in which human labour is still utilised, there is no special theoretical problem, since it is merely a question of the transfer of surplus value from one enterprise to another.It is an illustration of the law of equalisation of the profit rate, which will be explored later on. But let us imagine that this development has been pushed to its extreme and human labour has been completely eliminated from all forms of production and services. Can value continue to exist under these conditions? Can there be a society where nobody has an income but commodities continue to have a value and to be s old? Obviously such a situation would be absurd. A huge mass of products would be produced without this production creating any income, since no human being would be involved in this production.But someone would want to â€Å"sell† these products for which there were no longer any buyers! It is obvious that the distribution of products in such a society would no longer be effected in the form of a sale of commodities and as a matter of fact selling would become all the more absurd because of the abundance produced by general automation. Expressed another way, a society in which human labour would be totally eliminated from production, in the most general sense of the term, with services included, would be a society in which exchange value had also been eliminated.This proves the validity of the theory, for at the moment human labour disappears from production, value, too, disappears with it. II. cApItAl And cApItAlIsM cApItAl In prEcApItAlIst socIEty Between primitive society founded on a natural economy in which production is limited to use values destined for self-consumption by their producers, and capitalist society, there stretches a long period in human history, embracing essentially all human civilisations, which came to a halt before reaching the frontiers of capitalism.Marxism defines them as societies in which small-scale commodity production prevailed. A society of this kind is already familiar with the production of commodities, of goods designed for exchange on the market and not for direct consumption by the producers, but such commodity production has not yet become generalised, as is the case in capitalist society. In a society founded on small-scale commodity production, two kinds of economic operations are carried out.The peasants and artisans who bring their products to market wish to sell goods whose use value they themselves cannot use in order to obtain money, means of exchange, for the acquisition of other goods, whose use value i s either necessary to them or deemed more important than the use value of the goods they own. The peasant brings wheat to the marketplace which he sells for money; with this money he buys, let us say, cloth. The artisan brings his cloth to the market, which he sells for money; with this money he buys, let us say, wheat.What we have here, then, is the operation: selling in order to buy . C ommodity—Money—Commodity, C —M—C w hich has this essential character: the value of the two extremes in this formula is, by definition, exactly the same. But within small-scale commodity production there appears, alongside the artisan and small peasant, another personage, who executes a different kind of economic operation. Instead of selling in order to buy, he buys in order to sell. This type of person goes to market without any commodities; he is an owner of money.Money cannot be sold; but it can be used to buy, and that is what he does: buys in order to sell, in order to resell: M—C—M’. There is a fundamental difference between the two types of operation. The 24 An IntroductIon to MArxIst EconoMIc thEory second operation makes no sense if upon its completion we are confronted by exactly the same value as we had at the beginning. No one buys a commodity in order to sell it for exactly the same price he paid for it. The operation â€Å"buy in order to sell† makes sense only if the sale brings a supplementary value, a surplus value.That is why we state here, by way of definition. M’ is greater than M and is made up of M+m; m being the surplus value, the amount of increase in the value of M. We now define capital as a value which is increased by a surplus value, whether this occurs in the course of commodity circulation, as in the example just given, or in production, as is the case in the capitalist system. Capital, therefore, is every value which is augmented by a surplus value; it therefore exists not only in ca pitalist society but in any society founded on small-scale commodity production as well.For this reason it is necessary to distinguish very clearly between the life of capital and that of the capitalist mode of production, of capitalist society. Capital is far older than the capitalist mode of production. The former probably goes back some 3000 years, whereas the latter is barely 200 years old. What form does capital take in precapitalist society? It is basically usury capital and merchant or commercial capital. The passage from precapitalist society into capitalist society is characterised by the penetration of capital into the sphere of production.The capitalist mode of production is the first mode of production, the first form of social organisation, in which capital is not limited to the sole role of an intermediary and exploiter of non-capitalist forms of production, of small-scale commodity production. In the capitalist mode of production, capital takes over the means of produ ction and penetrates directly into production itself. orIgIns of thE cApItAlIst ModE of productIon What are the origins of the capitalist mode of production?What are the origins of capitalist society as it has developed over the past 200 years? They lie first of all in the separation of the producers from their means of production. Subsequently, it is the establishment of these means of production as a monopoly in the hands of a single social class, the bourgeoisie. And finally, it is the appearance of another social class which has been separated from its means of production and therefore has no other resources for its subsistence than the sale of its labour-power to the class which has monopolised the means of production.Let us consider each of these origins of the capitalist mode of production, which are at the same time the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist Capital and Capitalism 25 system as well. First characteristic: separation of the producer from his means of pr oduction. This is the fundamental condition for existence of the capitalist system but it is also the one which is generally the most poorly understood. Let us use an example which may seem paradoxical since it is taken from the early Middle Ages, which was characterised by serfdom.We know that the mass of peasant-producers were serfs bound to the soil. But when we say that the serf was bound to the soil, we imply that the soil was also â€Å"bound† to the serf, that is, he belonged to a social class which always had a base for supplying its needs, enough land to work so that the individual serf could meet the needs of a household even though he worked with the most primitive implements. We are not viewing people condemned to death by starvation if they do not sell their labour-power.In such a society, there is no economic compulsion to hire out one’s arms, to sell one’s labour-power to a capitalist. We can express this another way by stating that the capitalist system cannot develop in a society of this kind. This general truth also has a modern application in the way colonialists introduced capitalism into the African countries during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Let us look at the livin